Adapted from the Israeli series Magpie, Kankhajura attempts to infuse itself with local flavour, setting the tale in a politically volatile Goa.
Directed by Chandan Arora and now streaming on Sony LIV, Kankhajura slithers through moral grey zones with a cast led by the magnetic Roshan Mathew, alongside Mohit Raina, Sarah Jane Dias, Trinetra Haldar, and Usha Nadkarni. Set in a Goa far removed from postcards and parties, the eight-episode thriller follows a recently released convict whose return to his brother’s world sparks a slow, calculated unravelling of trust, power, and memory. What begins as a quiet homecoming soon contorts into a chilling mind game—one where the past isn’t just revisited, but weaponised.
Though the series opens with an ethical dilemma—‘Did Ashu take the fall for Max and his childhood accomplices?’ It never allows that question to unravel into a true moral reckoning between the men.The narrative revolves around the emotional weight of living with deception, never peeling back the layers of guilt, complicity, or the psychological toll of sustained pretense. Instead, it gestures vaguely at redemption, ending with a hollow suggestion that truth—or at least the more palatable lie—somehow prevails. The show flirts with darkness but never commits to its full potential, relying instead on Roshan Mathew’s formidable performance to shoulder the burden of depth the writing fails to carry.
The narrative buckles under the strain of its sprawling subplots ranging from gang rivalries and political machinations to scattered affairs and buried childhood trauma, all of which eclipse the core fraternal tension it initially promises. One can’t help but imagine how much sharper and more resonant Kankhajura might have been as a tightly-woven feature film, trimmed by at least an hour from its current runtime. The pause between each of its eight episodes feels less like a chapter turning the page and more like a narrative stutter that is prolonged and purposeless, diluting momentum rather than deepening it.
Mathew’s portrayal of Ashu is hypnotic, threading feral innocence with methodical cruelty. His ambiguity becomes the moral grey zone the series wishes to explore but fails to sustain. Despite Roshan Mathew’s fiercely compelling turn as Ashu, the show fails to give him the psychological scaffolding necessary for his descent. His manipulations, though central, lack the persuasive force and narrative dexterity they demand. For example, Ashu’s mind games—convincing a survivor to retract a complaint or nudging someone toward suicide—are presented without narrative finesse, reducing their psychological horror to clunky plot devices. For a show built on psychological intrigue, Ashu’s manipulations are executed too smoothly, relying more on narrative convenience than genuine cunning.
Max, the elder brother portrayed by Mohit Raina, is curiously underwritten in a narrative that cries out for moral complexity. While Ashu’s capacity for deception and psychological warfare is carefully calibrated, Max remains a static figure—his desires, fears, and internal conflicts frustratingly opaque. The result is an uneven power dynamic that undermines the thrill of their fraternal duel. The series never fully earns its tension because it fails to craft Max as a worthy adversary. This is Ashu’s manipulative labyrinth and everyone else, including the viewers, merely wanders through it, unaware of just how outplayed they are. Characters oscillate between victim and villain in ways that feel abrupt rather than earned. The script uses trauma as a shortcut to character motivation, yet never commits to exploring it with depth or psychological realism. The finale, which should deliver an operatic crescendo of betrayal and revelation, fizzles out in a hurried confrontation. Cinematically, the series remains safe and uninspired.
