One thing we have learned from watching streaming Indian series is that the writers of these series love to show how confused politics is in this vast country and how corrupt government and law enforcement officials can be. A new thriller set in the Punjab region shows that sometimes people who are on the right path can be drawn into this corruption with initially good intentions.
CAT: Stream or skip?
opening shot: “1990, Sialgarh, Punjab, India.” Three men with guns walk through the gloomy darkness.
The essentials: Back then, Gurnam Singh (Randeep Hooda) was a young informant, a CAT, for the Punjab Police. He infiltrated a terrorist gang that killed his parents and helped police take down the gang during a gun deal. For his efforts, he and his brother and sister, both young children, get a new home and a new identity.
Now, in 2006, Gurnam lives a day-to-day life as a mechanic. His sister has settled in Canada, but his brother Sunny (Danish Sood) still lives there, where he’s struggling in college. Instead of studying, Sunny sneaks into a concert where he is caught selling drugs and arrested.
During an election year, police are under pressure to crack down on drugs, with one candidate promising Punjab will be drug-free if elected. The incumbent of the congregation, Madam Alukah (Geeta Agrawal), is absolutely corrupt as she is also the local drug lord. To keep the press in check, she offers the police one of her dealers for a drug arrest. One of the inspectors, Sehtab Singh (Suvinder Vicky), agrees with this deception but is not happy with it; neither does junior police officer Babita Masih (Hasleen Kaur).
Desperate to drop the charges against Sunny, Gurnam turns to his old police contact, Shetab Singh. Shetab, who is about to retire, wants a big payday for his part. Shtab makes a deal with Alukah’s opponent to bring him down and put him in charge of “Might and Powder”. To do this, he needs a CAT to infiltrate Alukah’s operation and shut it down from the inside. He goes and finds Gurnam and tells him that if he goes undercover again, the charges against Sunny will be dropped.
What shows will it remind you of? Think of the old 80’s series wise guyexcept with Punjabi politics as a background.
Our opinion: The idea behind it CAT, created by Balwinder Singh Janjua, is that Gurnam will go undercover and face the darkness of his past as he helped Shetab and the police bring down the terrorist cells that were rampant in the Punjab. Gurnam has spent the last 15 years raising his siblings and getting over the fact that the terrorists he helped take down his parents got killed. He’s seen a lot and tried to bury it, but it’ll all surface again as he digs deeper into the undercover investigation.
As with most shows from India, knowledge of a specific region’s politics is not required, but at least helpful. Government officials are almost always portrayed as corrupt and duplicitous, with the elections coming down to who pays the right people. Is it always like that there? Probably not. But, boy, Indian series writers sure love to write about institutional corruption, including complicit cops.
Where this series will go a bit beyond Gurnam going undercover is how Shetab’s motivations will affect Gurnam. It seems that Shetab has followed the honorable path of being a police officer up to this point, and he is now bitter at how little it has done him. Gurnam is confident he’s still honorable, but now he’s allied with a rival kingpin. How will Gurnam feel when he realizes he’s basically working to swap one drug lord for another? And what will it bring out of its past?
gender and skin: none.
farewell shot: Shetab asks Gurnam if he can be a CAT for him again.
sleeping star: Pramod Pathak plays Chandan Kumar, commander of the local precinct and apparently the show’s comic relief; The way he injures himself during the “bust” is a really funny moment.
Most pilot line: One of Alukah’s boys puts a dealer who works for their rival through a threshing machine and kills him. “That’s one vote less” for the opponent, he jokes.
Our appeal: Stream it. Once you get the grip on the rivalries and how corrupt the politicians and cops are in the story, CAT turns into an entertaining thriller.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and technology, but he doesn’t fool himself: He’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.comFast Company and elsewhere.