‘The Last Hour’ review: Exquisitely shot series about nothing

Directed by Amit Kumar, the eight-episode series at the height of its dramatic highs, looks like a concept presentation that went knocking on Ekta Kapoor’s doors but was ultimately turned down for the lack of erotica

There is a lush of coldness that pervades The Last Hour — no, it is definitely not because of its geographical setting: Nepal. Its coldness — whether in the way characters act by putting a unbelievably stoic performance or respond to their immediate situation with a largely devil-may-care attitude, or its icy premise that screams for some friction — stems from a place of nothingness and makes you feel alienated from the proceedings, even if you try, genuinely try, to make an effort to navigate through a premise that could only be described dead on arrival. If the writing suffers from the onslaught of this cold treatment, it is another thing that scenes pile up one after the other without much thought, often leaving us with a sense of deja vu, in the manner with which certain scenes are constructed as if they were stuck in an infinite time loop. That should perhaps answer your question about whether The Last Hour is worthwhile. The series flirts with the idea of time and uses it for the world building exercise. Time is what is its serious problem, for The Last Hour does not boast of a material that would hold your interest for eight episodes, in what could have otherwise been a tighter feature film in under two hours. For your question on what’s new, though, there is an answer: jhakri (shaman), apart from the good decision to cast predominantly North-East actors.