Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Jamtara: Sabka Number Ayeka’ on Netflix, an Indian Series About the Crimes of Serial Phone-Phishermen

Netflix show Jamtara: Sabka Number Ayeka opens with a disclaimer stating that it’s fiction inspired by real events. Those real events are compelling: Between 2015 and 2017, Indian police worked to crack down on an astonishing number of telephone phishing scams and other cybercrimes sourced from the poor, rural Jamtara district. It’s a situation ripe for television — so will this 10-episode series successfully encapsulate the social, political and human stories therein, and live up to its potential?

JAMTARA: SABKA NUMBER AYEKA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A quick-cut establishing shot of an arch monument in India.

The Gist: Young men sit under thatched canopies in remote, dusty deserts. Surprisingly, they have crisp, clear cell phone service — all the easier to call people and dupe them into volunteering their credit card numbers. They use comically fake voices, pretending to be bank representatives reporting account issues or promising sweepstakes prizes. They’re classic scenarios that we’ve been warned about, and seem obviously phony. But they still work, to the tune of tens of millions of rupees.

A cop lines up a handful of those young men, all teenagers, for a court hearing, but the judge quickly shuttles them out the door. The scammers are led by cousins Rocky (Anshumaan Pushkar) and Sunny (Sparsh Shrivastava). The former introduces the six young men to Brajesh (Amit Sial), a rich, well-dressed politician emanating serious organized-crime vibes, and may be the key to Rocky’s political goals; he gives Rocky a (cue dramatic music flourish) pistol. The latter uses a job at the local school as cover, and he’s dating the English teacher, Gudiya (Monkia Panwar), who’s leery of his scams. Sunny and Rocky are in the midst of a power struggle; they argue and exchange fisticuffs.

Meanwhile, moments after the local police superintendent pooh-poohs the cybercriminals as dumb teenagers who just need to be roughed up, in walks his replacement, Dolly (Aksha Pardasany), whose expression clearly shows that she’ll take this issue very seriously. And a reporter, Anas Ahmad (Aasif Khan) is chewed out by his editor for getting beat to the phishing story by another newspaper.

Our Take: Jamtara crams a lot of establishment into a single 34-minute episode, and it’s too much: A half-dozen young perpetrators, a few cops, a handful of family members, a journalist and his jerk boss, a couple of odd peripheral characters and, of course, several strands in the skein of relationships among them. Read a news report about the Jamtara cybercrimes, and it’ll give you color context — this is a story about youth pushed into crime by a lack of substantial opportunity in an underserved community. We only get a minimal whiff of this rich setting as the episode moves lickity-split from one set of faces to the next.

So it’s hard to get an emotional toehold here yet; the focus seems to be on Sunny-and-Rocky-related complications, but we’ve yet to see them do much besides argue. Visually and technically, however, Jamtara shows more art and nuance via thoughtful cinematography and set design. You’ll only wish the screenplay allowed it a little more time to linger on the details. After one episode, the show lacks focus and is a little opaque. Here’s hoping it gets better soon.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: We hear a gunshot in a moment of chaos as Rocky and Sunny tussle.

Sleeper Star: Key female characters are likely to be the story’s moral core: Gudiya’s caught in a difficult situation elucidated by her mother, who pressures her to earn money so they can have electricity, but doesn’t approve of her desire to marry Sunny and benefit from his riches. And Dolly seems poised to be the lone authority figure with any hardline scruples.

Most Pilot-y Line: Two stoned teenage scammers try to split semantic hairs in between phone calls:

“Assholes can’t be bastards?” one says.

“No, usually assholes are bastards,” the other replies.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Although the pilot episode only kicks up dust when it could be digging deeper, Jamtara probably deserves another episode or two to develop before we throw in the towel.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Jamtara: Sabka Number Ayega on Netflix