Rangbaaz · Season 1 · ZEE5
Rangbaaz Season 1
Rangbaaz Season 1 is a WORTH-IT, BollyMeter 7.6/10. 9 episodes on ZEE5 from 22 December 2018.
Updated
What BollyAI Thinks
The first season of Rangbaaz zeroes in on the real-life criminal career of Shri Prakash Shukla, who terrorised Gorakhpur and eastern UP through the 1990s before being killed in a 1998 police encounter. Director Bhav Dhulia grounds the storytelling in period texture - the crumbling towns, the political patronage networks, the police-criminal nexus - while Saqib Saleem invests the role with a menace that avoids easy glorification. Indian critics and ZEE5 subscribers received it warmly as one of the platform's first quality originals. IWMBuzz called it 'an intense, hard-hitting tale.' The show's eight-episode arc keeps pace taut, and the real-events framing gives the violence moral weight rather than pulp spectacle. Viewer reception on IMDb settled around 7.8, signalling durable appreciation among crime-drama fans.
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The Room
“A binge-watching worthy gangster drama with a heart - one of ZEE5's few offerings with real substance in writing and treatment.”
The Contemplation of a Joker
Standout Episodes
The hours worth arguing about - premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.
- E1Apaharan7.5
The series premiere establishes young Shiv Prakash Shukla's Gorakhpur as a world where caste, political muscle and criminal opportunity are inseparable. Direction keeps the period texture grounded rather than stylised.
The moment: The opening kidnapping that gives the episode its title - the act that sets Shukla on his irreversible path.