Criminal Justice · Season 1 · JioHotstar
Criminal Justice Season 1
Criminal Justice Season 1 is a MUST-WATCH, BollyMeter 8.4/10. 10 episodes on JioHotstar from 5 April 2019.
Updated
What BollyAI Thinks
The original BBC series Criminal Justice was a clinical examination of how ordinary people get chewed up by a system that processes guilt as a bureaucratic convenience. The Indian adaptation, directed by Tigmanshu Dhulia, makes one central addition: Madhav Mishra, played by Pankaj Tripathi as a man whose competence is perennial and whose ethics are situational. The first season follows Aditya Sharma (Vikrant Massey), a young man who wakes up next to a murdered woman with no memory of the night and no resources to fight the system now arresting him for it. The show is at its best in the procedural mechanics - the Bombay court system's rhythms, the negotiation of bail, the theatre of cross-examination - and Tripathi turns Mishra's dry wit into a kind of moral armour that the show is quietly suspicious of. Jackie Shroff as the antagonist and Mita Vashisht as the prosecutor are both exceptional. The season established a franchise; the character of Mishra became appointment television.
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The Room
“Pankaj Tripathi aces a character with dry humor - his witty lines make you smirk at the same court system that terrifies you.”
IMDb (critic aggregation)
Standout Episodes
The hours worth arguing about — premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.
- E1The Night It Began8.2
The premiere drops Aditya Sharma into a situation so ordinary in its origins and so catastrophic in its consequences that the viewer's discomfort is the point. Massey plays the bewilderment with complete conviction. Tripathi appears late in the episode, but the moment Madhav Mishra walks into the police station, the show's register shifts - you understand immediately what kind of show this is going to be.
The moment: Mishra's first assessment of Aditya's case - a diagnosis delivered with the practiced casualness of a man who has seen this particular failure of justice before.
“Vikrant Massey anchors the premiere with the precise vulnerability the story demands.” — Scroll.in
- E10The Verdict8.6
The season finale delivers its court verdict and then asks what justice means in a system that processes cases rather than people. The final scene between Mishra and Aditya is the season's best writing: two men on different sides of the privilege divide reckoning with what the system has extracted from each of them.
The moment: Mishra's closing argument - not the legal points but the human ones.
“A finale that rewards the season's patience - Criminal Justice delivers on its considerable promise.” — Times of India