AT THE TIME TO REVIEW, HOTSTAR HAD STILL NOT RELEASED THIS TITLE ON HULU, SO THIS SERIES WAS REVIEWED BY OUR INDIA DESK.

CAST: Shweta Tripathy, Plabitha Borthakur, Javed Jaffery, Siddharth

DIRECTOR: Siddharth Kumar Tewary

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: The different journeys of six regular Indians as they struggle to win, fame and fortune on a social media app called Escaype Live which promises big money to the winning contestant. Will the lines between the real and virtual begin to blur as they gear up for the contest?

WHAT DID WE THINK?

A tech company announces a mega contest on the interactive app Escaype Live. Contestants have 32 days to amass diamonds awarded by viewers. The person with the most diamonds will win three crore rupees.

Writer-director Siddharth Kumar Tewary creates composite characters. A girl from Jaisalmer is egged on by her ambitious mother and uncle to perform raunchy dance numbers. A young woman (Plabita Borthakur), trapped by circumstance and a twisted boss, plays up to sexual fetishes. A parkour enthusiast (Ritvik Sahore) wants to break out of his Mumbai slum. They must all compete with the leading contestant, the obnoxious and unhinged prankster Darkie (Sumedh Mudgalkar).

Escapye Live starts with a packed punch, capturing the zeitgeist of  Instagram, Twitter and and Tik Tok world of influencers and their race to instant fame. Anyone with a smartphone is a potential celebrity. 

The users are being monitored from a operations center out of Bangalore. A new recruit with a questionable compass threatens to blow the whole op up. Krishna (Siddharth), a software engineer with a conservative and middle-class upbringing, is the virus that the company’s software cannot handle. 

Bringing in gender divide, sexuality with class distinction, the story moves along Black Mirror territory, with a dash of The Hunger Games and Squid Game quite quickly. However, coming from the world of tech, a more viable hook for te gamers to behave driven enough to be addicted does not appear in the game mechanics.

The show is not researched well enough to be so futuristic that it would get our inventive juices flowing. There are so many story loopholes that have no answers. 

Why would a wealthy family allow a deranged man to be their long-term houseguest? How can a mother be  pranked into believing that her son is dead and then condone the friendship between her son and an influencer? Why does a woman with so many choices believe playing up to male fantasies is her best option?

Tiwary maks a confused multiverse, flipping between the app’s futuristic headquarters to the ground reality of users whose online personas and actions earn both the consumer and the company revenue. The stubbornness of Rani (Aadyaa Sharma), the girl from Jaisalmer, and her erasure of innocence and manipulation by her guardians is the most frightening. The most problematic representation is of transgender Rajkumar/Meena (Rohit Chandel), who finds expression as a drag queen.

Walushca D’Souza’s Gia and Jaaved Jaaferi’s Ravi (both costumed in structured power suits) are meant to be old, compassionless in that get-up. Driven largely by profit, they see users as commodities and seek the validation of their Chinese bosses.We thought that was just playing to the masses in an anti-china feel. Software and gaming companies are hoodie donning even in the deep crevices of Chinese back waters.

Sidharth, Mugdalkar and Chandel are good watch, iperfecting their characters completely from perplexity to chaos, obligation to passion, credulity to psychoses. Borthakur’s Hina needs the same kind of impudence as her online avatar of Fetish Girl who she plays with spirit.

Despite this, the series so far does have the potential of a strong social commentary, which somehow gets lost along the way, tit does build a case through background music and production values. Escaype Live achieves in portraying the distinction between the world you see on a screen and the universe outside of it, highlighting the other side of social media, instant celebrityhood, aspiration and the meaning of success in a totally new online world.