CAST: Sushant Singh, Abhishek Banerjee, Gaurav Chopra ,Aditya Menon, Rana Daggubati, Venkatesh, Surveen Chawla
DIRECTOR: Suparn Verma, Karan Anshuman
Rana Daggubati plays Rana Naidu, who literally cleans up the mess of his high-profile clients for a living. He’s called the fixer of the stars and he takes his job quite seriously. As much as Rana knows how to fix things and help people live tension-free; he struggles on the home front and his relationship with his family – wife and two children – is broken beyond repair. To make things worse, his estranged father Naga Naidu (Venkatesh) is released from prison after 15 years for a crime he never committed in the first place. As Naga prepares himself for vengeance, he wishes to fix his estranged relationship with Rana and his other two sons to become the patriarch he failed to be when he had the opportunity.
Rana Naidu, the Indian adaptation of Ray Donovan, may come across like a crime caper, but what it is actually at the heart is a family drama. This portrayal of a dysfunctional family with a blend of crime, celebrity scandal cover-ups and politics makes the show quite riveting.
Rana Naidu takes the whole family dynamics and gives it a sinister twist. Here’s a family that’s more flawed than one can even imagine. Naga’s other two sons – Jaffa (Abhishek Banerjee) is a recovering alcoholic who was abused by a Swamiji as a child, while his brother, Tej Naidu (Sushant Singh), is a stuntman with Parkinson’s, a result of Naga pushing him too much while performing a stunt. As the layers of the family members keep peeling off with each episode, the show manages to give us so much drama that you’re hooked till the end. The drama is so intense and palpable that every time Rana and Naga come face-to-face, it’s the fiercest moments of the show. Both of them sell the face-off and rivalry so convincingly that you can’t stop yourself from rooting for them.
When the show shifts its focus from Rana’s familial issues, we still get ample drama in the form of high-profile conspiracies. There’s also Naga, who’s trying to set things right by pulling the right strings. More than Rana, it’s Venkatesh as Naga, who brings so much of freshness to the show with his performance. He also brings a whiff of much needed humour, especially with his Hyderabad Hindi, in an otherwise serious show. His performance beautifully oscillates between a chilled-out guy desperate for a shot to reunite with his family and someone who’s quietly mustering the thirst for vengeance. Rana, too, is effectively brilliant in his role that’s torn apart between his high-risk job and a crumbling family. If there’s one thing that Rana Naidu really succeeds in, it’s extracting the best out of Rana and Venkatesh in a fashion you haven’t witnessed before.
