Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Kaala Paani’ On Netflix, An Indian Thriller Where A Mysterious Illness Traps Residents And Visitors To Two Remote Islands

One of the things that has come out of the explosion of money being spent by streamers like Netflix to develop shows overseas is that series formats are being tried in those countries for the first time. According to Netflix’s press materials for instance, the new series Kaala Paani is the first survival series created in India. What is a survival series? Read on and find out.

KAALA PAANI: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “DECEMBER, 2027.” A shot of a beach at dusk. “JENKINS ISLAND. 40 KMS SOUTH OF PORT BLAIR.”

The Gist: Indigenous tribal members come up from the beach and enter the forest. In Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chiranjeevi “Chiru” Prabhu (Sukant Goel) is bringing a young man to a new job at the prison on the island, where freedom fighters are doing time. He mentioned that a big winter festival is about to happen, which will bring thousands of tourists to the Andamans. In the meantime, the indigenous Orakas use a massive boulder to bust open the water pipeline the massive conglomerate ATOM has installed to bring fresh water to the islands.

The Salva family flies into Port Blair to attend the festival; Chiru negotiates with them to bring them to their hotel and take them on a tour of both islands. On the drive in, they run into a protest about deforestation and protecting the Orakas, and Chiru sees none other than his brother Vinayak (Privansh Jora) among the protestors.

At ATOM’s headquarters, police chief Ketan Kamat (Amey Wagh) tells the CEO that he’s having a rough time getting health clearances for the festival from the Chief Medical Officer, whom he calls a “stubborn prick.”

We see the CMO, Dr. Soundamini Singh (Mona Singh), doing hospital rounds. She’s characterized by a prosthetic leg and a low tolerance for working with anyone, much less residents who slow her down. She won’t give medical clearance to the festival because she has a ward about a dozen people from Jenkins Island are being treated for a mysterious illness that includes black lesions on people’s backs. One of the people who is sick is the young man Chiru dropped off at a job at the town’s jail.

Dr. Singh keeps sending calls from Kamat to voice mail as she tries to get to the bottom of where this came from, with the help of Ritu Gagra (Radhika Mehrotra), a communicable disease researcher. There seems to be a connection to a small outbreak in 1989 that had similar symptoms, but people’s memories of that outbreak are a bit dim almost 40 years later.

Kamat eventually has the ATOM CEO bring in the big guns, Admiral Zibran Qadri (Ashutosh Gowariker), Lieutenant Governor of Andaman and Nicobar. He tries to get to the bottom of what’s going on, but since Dr. Singh can’t tell whether this will be a bigger breakout or not, at least not yet, she ends up singing off on the approval for the festival. Then, much to her surprise, all of the patients in the ward are released.

Chiru convinces Santhosh Salva (Vikas Kumar) to take his wife Gargi (Sarika Singh) to an overnight to Jenkins Island and leave his teenage kids in Port Blair, as a way to show his son Parth (Payvash Jain) that he can be on his own on a trip.

Dr. Singh goes to one of the Jenkins Island villages where some of the patients came from; not only does she see many more people affected by the mystery disease, but she realizes just where the illness’ source is.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Containment, The Strain, The Stand… pretty much any show that has to do with an illness that wipes out massive amounts of people except for a few hearty survivors.

Our Take: There may be a few too many stories going on during the first episode of Kaala Paani, created by Sameer Saxena. In addition to what we mentioned above, we also have Vinayak reconnecting with an old flame, Jyotsna Dev (Arushi Sharma), who is ostensibly back on the island to sell some family property but seems to be hiding some secrets of her own. In a survival series such as this, having a lot of story threads to follow is pretty much SOP. But the first episode loses a lot of momentum as it tries to service all of these stories, and we’re wondering just how much time they’re all going to get as the virus spreads and thousands of people are threatened.

That’s the big gist of this series; it’s not just the people currently on the Andamans who are going to be affected; it’s the hundreds of thousands of people who are going to show up for the December festival. And, given there’s a lot of talk about how the water that surrounds the islands are almost like natural walls, the feeling is going to be more about being trapped while the virus rages with no way out, as it seems that officials on the mainland will try to isolate the islands to contain the virus.

The storylines are your pretty standard disaster/survival drama storylines: One or two voices raising alarm, a government official denying anything is wrong out of brutal self-interest, ordinary citizens who use their street smarts to survive, a family or group that is in the wrong place at the wrong time. For now, it feels like the stories are at least progressing well and the virus is going to be expanding pretty rapidly as we see just where the pathogen is coming from. From there the idea is to see who survives and who gets out, and that’s where the tension will come from.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: As the water is pumped to the islands, the faucet at the prison that was turned off by the Orakas’ vandalism sputters back to life.

Sleeper Star: Jyotsna Dev (Arushi Sharma) has a secret, as we said, and we’re intrigued to know what it is.

Most Pilot-y Line: There are some strangely misplaced scenes that are meant to be light but feel out of place, like when Singh’s residents can’t bring themselves to realize that a senior citizen patient may have an STI. Also, the fable of the scorpion and the frog is heavily referenced throughout, and at one point Chiru’s mom repeats the story to him as if it’s something that millions of people don’t already know, given it’s one of the most oft-told fables on the planet.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Kaala Paani moves along nicely enough that it should keep viewers on the edge of their seats, but the show needs to be careful not to get derailed by too many story threads that have the potential to go nowhere.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.