‘Mai’ review: Sakshi Tanwar shines in this everywoman’s revenge 

The crime thriller series on Netflix is bound in the tapestry of grief, a rarity in these days of vigilante entertainment

As yet another mother seeks justice for her daughter by taking the law into her hands, one was prepared for a predictable slow burner where an everywoman would transform into a revenge machine, and eventually find the culprit from a bevy of red herrings.

However, the Netflix series turns out to be much more. The crime thriller is bound in the tapestry of grief, a rarity in these days of vigilante entertainment. The realistic approach makes you emotionally bond with Sheel Chaudhary (Sakshi Tanwar), the mourning mother in search of justice in the labyrinthine Lucknow during the course of the six-episode series. 

When Sheel tastes the favourite pastry of her daughter, our throat develops a lump. When she tells the school clerk how good her mute daughter was at making friends, one can’t prevent the eyes from welling up. Even the lighting is dim and amber, perhaps, indicating the jaundiced world that directors Atul Mongia and Anshai Lal have painted for Sheel and the audience to navigate.

It is the kind of series where violence not only appears inevitable, but also justified. And that is what makes it difficult to absorb. 

Sheel shows spine without shedding her cultural values and gender traits, ingrained over the years. It makes her actions believable and closer to the world around us.

Sakshi ensures that there is not an ounce of pretense left in her performance. Her everyday charm makes you tide over the larger-than-life leaps that Sheel takes as the series progresses. She owns the screen but still manages to look fragile and vulnerable,a nd reminds one of Pavan Malhotra’s performance in  Tabbar, where grief was a dominant emotion as well.

The genteel nurse works in an old-age home. When her doctor-daughter Supriya dies in an ‘accident’, Sheel, unlike her husband Yash and family members, doesn’t buy the police theory and goes in search of powerful people who wanted her mute daughter to go silent. She listens to the threats and the abusive language of the mobsters with a straight face and goes about her job.