Pretty Good !! Finally, we have a web series in India made by a top production house with great production values, good content and story and a well known star cast.
Inside Edge is inspired by the IPL and all the backroom drama behind it. So we have the Bollywood actress wonderfully played by Richa Chadda desperately trying to save her team and career, Angad Bedi plays the honest and principal Team Captain, Tanuj Virwani the swash buckling superstar, Amit Sial the devil in the team, Siddhant Chaturvedi the young inexperienced one, Sanjay Suri the nice coach with a hidden past and finally Viveik Oberoi the master villain.
And to this with a great supporting star cast consisting on Sayani Gupta and Manu Rishi Chadha and you get is an edge of the seat thriller.
What I enjoyed the most is that most of the characters are fleshed out. Most of them are grey; some forced to sell the soul to Devil while some trying to runaway from it. Each one is fighting their demon inside and some issue thats challenging them.
The show beautifully captures the money and power in cricket and how as Angad Bedi's says the game is run by politicians and filmstars who nothing about the game. How honest cricketers are forced into corruption and how money can be made by one shot or delivery. This show highlights the casteism in team with Sial being the upper caste running down Chaturvedi who is from a lower caste. Each episode ends on an interesting note and there are enough twists and turns to keep you glued. And I loved the last 5 mins of the show..brilliant!! And thanks to the show being on the internet, there is no censorship...so no beep on cuss words and good sex scenes.
However, the writing could have been more crisper, Oberoi's character is too cartoonish and sometimes it becomes a bit boring in the middle of the season. Also, the show dialogues move between Hindi and English which left me confused sometimes.
The performances are top notch. Richa Chadha is in fine form. Though her English dialogue delivery is poor and I don't blame a bit for her, she covers it with a controller performance. Angad Bedi is a revelation; he needs to do more good stuff after last year's Pink and Dear Zindagi, Suri is seasoned actor and is good in a small supporting role of a man with a troubled past, while Tanuj and Sayani are great in their roles of a heart throb - sex machine - dope smoking cricketer and his cricket analyst sister.
However, the stars of the show are Manu Rishi the rival team owner who is brilliant in a small but important role, Sial the corrupted cricketer and Chaturvedi who is inexperienced discriminated but learns to fight back.
But the biggest disappointment in this lovely series is the villain. Oberoi is a decent actor but the problem here is that he has been giving a cartoonish villain to performance and instead of being subtle, Oberoi just goes overtop. We never get to know who is he, where he is from and who is behind. Pity for Oberoi.
Overall a good product and I am waiting for season 2. Hope it remains as good as one.