The Trial: Pyaar, Kanoon, Dhokha Web Review: Kajol Is Good But It's Sheeba Chadha Who Emerges Triumphant

Director: Suparn S Varma

Cast: Kajol, Jisshu Sengupta, Sheeba Chadha, Alyy Khan, Kubbra Sait, Gaurav Pandey, Aseem Hattangadi, Beena, Kiran Kumar, Aamir Ali, Atul Kumar

Where: Streaming now on Disney+Hotstar

Rating: 2.5 stars

Adapted from the international show The Good Wife, The Trial: Pyaar, Kanoon, Dhokha plays out like a loud opera that you opted for presuming it to be grand and opulent. Turns out, it is simply shrill.

Noyonika Sengupta (Kajol) is fraught with betrayal from her marriage as her husband and celebrated judge Rajiv Sengupta (Jisshu Sengupta) is arrested for seeking sexual favours. With a firm resolve, she decides to put her marriage aside to become the responsible mother who must protect her innocent daughters from the constant media and public onslaught. In order to ensure that her husband's faults don't cause a dent on the family's future, Noyonika resumes her practice as a junior associate at a law firm, run by friend Vishal Chowdhury (Alyy Khan) and his partner Malini Khanna (Sheeba Chadha). She befriends colleague and consultant Sana (Kubbra Sait) while immediate associate Dheeraj Paswan (Gaurav Pandey) resents her. In between, she feels answerable to her mother-in-law (Beena) who assumes that Noyonika has neglected her duties as a wife and a mother for her career.

Directed by Suparn S Varma of The Family Man and Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai fame, your immediate expectation when a courtroom drama is presented before you is impact, with or without the drama. Unfortunately, The Trial comes across as a TV potboiler from the 90s that screams of drama and over-the-top theatrics. Glaringly, logic is the first thing that is junked into the bin.

The start of the series itself is firstly hurried. You aren't given enough context to understand what exactly transpired for Rajiv that led to him committing what he does. That is given away by a loud-mouthed news anchor (Atul Kumar evidently pulling off an Arnab Goswami) narrating the series of events through a news segment. But, what follows is bizarre. With their bank accounts frozen, the family is left cash-strapped and they'll have to shift from their palatial abode to someplace else. That 'someplace else' is fancier than an average studio apartment.

Secondly, Noyonika gets hired just by a mere phone call to her ex-flame and is immediately assigned all the prolific cases, despite her lack of experience and professional inactivity. While you might find yourself thinking exactly like Dheeraj does, the truth is that this predicament sounds far too good to be true.

What's worth appreciating though is that the show attempts at demystifying the micro-aggressions at the workplace. The corporate snakes and ladder games, the manipulations, the superiority-inferiority politics, they all seem very familiar.

What's absolutely deplorable is the background music that accompanies the narrative. It's the show's singular weak link and just makes it's viewing experience intolerable.

The performances though provide some respite. While Kajol is competent in her maiden OTT attempt (never mind the occasional loudness), the show is worth sitting through for Sheeba Chadha. As the placid Malini Khanna, she keeps you engrossed in guessing games when you are not able to tell her next move or mood. An extremely effective performance. The rest of the cast are fairly serviceable although Alyy Khan walks the tightrope between being a dependable ally and an uncomfortably brooding lover on the side.

Spread across 8 episodes, 'The Trial: Pyaar, Kanoon, Dhokha' left me underwhelmed. Maybe, because I've seen better courtroom dramas.

You can watch the show on Disney+Hotstar