Rana and Venkatesh Daggubati in the Netflix web series ‘Rana Naidu’ | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Actors Venkatesh and Rana Daggubati weren’t joking when they reiterated that their first web series Rana Naidu A family drama, best watched in isolation. This note of caution is for those who have followed his work in Telugu cinema and can expect to feel something good. Rana NaiduIndian adaptation of Karan Anshuman and Suparn Verma’s American series ray donovan, is a dark crime and family drama replete with sex, nudity and foul language. The series has some things going for it once you look past it, even if it’s flawed and sometimes clunky.
Rana Daggubati has been cast as Rana Naidu, a fixer who clears the dirty secrets of celebrities in Mumbai. It could be as obscure as retrieving a semen sample being smuggled into an ice bucket (I’m not making this up)! For all the cleaning work he does for others, Rana’s own life is riddled with the scars of the past.
The first two episodes serve as character introductions to members of the Rana Naidu family – his wife Naina (Surveen Chawla), a former Telugu cinema actress before marrying Rana and moved to Mumbai, and their children Ani (Madhav Dhingra) and Nitya (Afra Saeed). Rana’s elder brother Tej, a stunt choreographer (Sushant Singh), and younger brother Jaffa (Abhishek Banerjee) are both scarred from childhood. There is some kind of semblance to the family until the father, Naga Naidu (Venkatesh), walks out of Chanchalguda jail in Hyderabad and comes to Mumbai.
Rana Naidu (Hindi-Telugu)
Cast: Venkatesh Daggubati, Rana Daggubati, Surveen Chawla, Sushant, Abhishek Banerjee
Direction: Karan Anshuman and Suparn Verma
Music: John Stewart Eduri
(Stream on Netflix)
The series is filled with characters that range from worrying to over the top. Rana and his team – Lara (Lauren Robinson) and Srini (Aditya Menon) – put on a stern personality, no matter how dirty the jobs they are doing. His stoic face reveals nothing and he does not speak excessively. In one scene, a character asks Rana if, behind his stoic personality, is someone who cries secretly. gardener on television. At the other end of the spectrum are the allegedly annoying character Prince Reddy (Gaurav Chopra), Naga’s elder brother Surya (Ashish Vidyarthi), financier OB Mahajan (Rajesh Jais) and the many women he has affairs with.
Creating the world of Karan and Suparn Rana Naidu And its lead characters are belting them out with Telugu lines and Deccani phrases. ‘Baigan ke batan’ and ‘izzat ka falooda’ are thrown in liberally for characters who have their roots in Hyderabad. Naga Naidu is most colorful as the patriarch, who almost brushes off the emotional trauma from his sons’ childhood.
In contrast to the feel-good and family-friendly characters that Venkatesh has played in Telugu cinema for decades, he does everything that could be considered inappropriate as Naga Naidu. And it looks like she enjoyed taking a walk on the wild side. The face-off between him and Rana is the high point of the series. The real-life uncle-nephew duo don’t do anything on screen. Rana has played the bad guy before, but this evocative performance takes place in a darker place than his mainstream Bhallaldev in the film. bahubali movies. For the most part, he is required to look worried, but the series gives him the occasional window to portray the anguish of a man who wants to keep his family alive. Rana uses his towering personality to play the menacing fixer and share warm moments during his meltdowns or when he’s with his kids, who are dealing with their own angst.
Rana Daggubati, Surveen Chawla, Afrah Syed and Madhav Dhingra in ‘Rana Naidu’ | Photo credit: Saurabh Paul/Netflix
The carousel of crime that shadows this family goes on for way too long and not every subplot or character is of interest. The one that impressed me the most is Jaffa’s story (Abhishek Banerjee comes through with an visceral, sympathetic portrayal). When he opens up about his guilt of not firmly rebuking his abuser as a child, Suparn and Karan use the plot point to emphasize that a victim should not wallow in guilt. Not needed. Both Abhishek and Sushant play their characters with utmost sincerity.
Surveen has been cast in a part that is titled ‘What the Hell, Rana?’ or ‘What the ****, Rana?’. Stuck in a situation where she doesn’t know the dangers the family is facing and what Rana is really up to, her anger is not without reason.
While Naga’s characterization alternates between bad, oblivious, ugly and occasionally streaks of goodness, the story doesn’t give a clean chit to Rana either. There is also Suchitra Pillai but what exactly was the point of her character?
For Telugu film buffs from the 1990s and 2000s, Venkatesh’s old movies and songs have their drawbacks. For others, there is some morbid humour. A patient is asking a neurosurgeon what are his chances of survival after surgery for a brain tumor and the next shot shows us the board ‘Bheja Fry 50%’.
Underneath all this cloak of sex, booze and profanity, Rana Naidu There is an undercurrent of compassion. Cinematographer Jayakrishna Gummadi uses warm and dark tones to accentuate the grim atmosphere aided by John Stewart Eduri’s background score.
There’s some rewarding payoff at the end of the 10-episode series. but overall can Rana Naidu would be better? Most definitely.
(Rana Naidu streams on Netflix)