The digital revolution is here and almost every day, one either hears of a digital show going on the floors or releasing on a streaming platform. While there are some aspiring filmmakers, with only a camera and a few other tools at their disposal, making shows at a shoestring budget, the big players are pumping in big money to create content for the web. While most of the shows being made for the digital platform have content meant to be consumed by the adults, there are a few which cater to the family audience as well. ZEE5, ZEE’s OTT platform, has been producing some interesting original content since the last one year it was launched. There are shows like ‘Ghost Stories by Ruskin Bond’ which have family-friendly content and the shows which have adult content (‘Abhay’, ‘Rangbaaz’) do not have overtly violent or sexually charged content. Perhaps, ZEE aims to put out some of this content on television too. Hence, they are not making a lot of shows which would need heavy trimming before they can be aired on television. It’s new show ‘The Final Call’ is a thriller that would have probably got an U/A certificate had it gone to the Censors.
The first episode opens with air-hostess Parineeta (Anupriya Goenka) requesting the passengers, on the international flight, to wear their respective seal belt as the flight is about to depart. Suddenly, the passengers get alerted by a massive jerk in the flight and soon, we see the flight losing control and about to crash. We do not know if the flight indeed crashes as a flashback scene introduces us to Karan Sachdev, who is buying a dangerous poison from a local thug. It turns out that Karan is a commercial pilot and is about to fly flight number 502, the same plane we saw heading towards the land in the present-day portion.
Before embarking on a binge-watch, I had expected the entire narrative to wrap up in the first season itself. But, that is not the case as the last episode ends with a cliff-hanger. The show has been written and directed by Vijay Lalwani, who has just one feature film to his credit. Interestingly, ‘Karthik Calling Karthik’, which he made almost nine years back, was also a thriller which dealt with the psyche of the protagonist. ‘The Final Call’, though, has a much bigger canvas and the screenplay, unlike the film he had made, has several layers to it which keep unravelling one by one in the four episodes the first season is spread across. Apart from delving into the background of the main protagonist and slowly revealing the intentions behind what he is about to do, the show gives a good idea about some of the passengers on the flight like astrologer Krishnamurthy (Neeraj Kabi), industrialist Gautam Singhania (Jaaved Jaaferi), a gangster on the run (Vineet Sharma), among others. While these characters’ backstories adds an interesting element to the narrative, one expects them to play a little more important part in the events that unfold in real time. Vijay manages to strike a balance between incorporating thrill with a good amount of emotional depth in the story and one looks forward to see whether he goes for a similar balance in the second season as a lot of things, which created the space for emotions to kick in, have already been revealed.
Arjun Rampal comes up with a decent performance; a more expressive actor would have been able to show the gamut of emotions Karan goes through much better. Sakshi Tanwar is fantastic as the no-nonsense ATS officer Kiran Mirza. Javed Jafferi’s character gets an interesting backstory and the actor brings out the several layers in his character with panache. Neeraj Kabi gives a wonderfully restrained performance. Anupriya Goenka gets some good scenes to show her acting prowess; she does a very good job. The banter between Paula McGlynn and Anshuman Malhotra brings some relief in an otherwise intense story.
The fact that I binge-watched the show (though there are just four episodes) means that I really enjoyed it. The first season manages to get you involved with the characters and the issues each of them are dealing with. It manages to pack in a sense of emergency and manages to keep you at the edge of your seats. The cliffhanger definitely makes one look forward to the second season.