Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein’ On Netflix, An Indian Drama About A Man Reluctantly Embroiled In A Politically-Fueled Love Triangle

When was the last time you saw a good love triangle story in a drama? We’re not talking about someone having to choose between two people who are equally good. We’re talking about someone having to avoid the powerful person obsessed with him while trying to maintain the loving relationship he already has. This is the conflict at the center of a new Netflix drama from India.

YEH KAALI KAALI ANKHEIN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man is holed up in an abandoned house. When the words “Will you be my friend?” pop in his head, he turns around in a paranoid manner. “My name is Vikrant,” he says. “Vikrant Singh Chauhan. Date of birth: 19th December. Date of death: Probably today.” As police and soldiers descend on the house, he starts shooting at them.

The Gist: Vikrant (Tahir Raj Bhasin) has been haunted by a woman named Pruva (Tahir Raj Bhasin) since he was a kid. She’s the daughter of Akhiraj Aswathi (Saurabh Shukla), a local politician with an outlandish amount of power; Vikrant’s father works for him and worships the ground he walks on. As kids at the same school, every time she was there, Vikrant suffered some physical pain. She asked him to be her friend, and he refused. Soon, she ends up moving away.

Vikrant continued his life, going to college for engineering, and meeting Shikha (Saurabh Shukla). Since graduation, he’s been sitting around his family’s home and his dad is getting tired of it. He says he’s waiting for a job offer letter for a factory out of town; he knows the offer is solid, and he’s excited to start a new life with Shikha there.

But his dad insists that Vikrant interview with Akhiraj. On his way to the politician’s office, he sees a beautiful woman coming out of an indoor pool. He knows right away that Pruva is back. She hasn’t at all forgotten Vikrant; she even enumerates the time they’ve been apart down to the day. Vikrant, who wants to move away and get a fresh start, tanks the interview until Akhiraj gets a call from his daughter to hire him and have him work at her Zumba studio. Because the salary is many times what he was going make at the factory, his dad insists he take the job.

His first task is to escort Purva out to a pier that the whole class visited when they were in school. There is no real reason why he’s out there — she has a driver that knows the area — but when she turns to look straight at him, he knows that Purva is as obsessed with him as she was in grade school. When Shikha gets wind of what went on, she understandably gets angry, and Vikrant’s buddy Golden (Avant V. Joshi) doesn’t disabuse her of her worries.

To save his relationship more than anything else, Vikrant decides he wants to risk the anger of Akhiraj — and his father — and tell the politician that he doesn’t want the job. But when he goes to the office, he sees something that he certainly shouldn’t have — Akhiraj beating and accidentally killing a man. Akhiraj’s henchmen recruit Vikrant to help them dismantle and get rid of the body.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein (loosely translated as “These Black Black Eyes”) would be the result of mixing Fatal Attraction with the ever-present topic of Indian politics. Let’s hope no bunnies get harmed in the making of this show.

Our Take: Because almost all Indian drama seems like it needs to have a political bent to it, the love triangle at the center of Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein is driven by politics, namely the corrupt and violent rule of the local thug/politician Akhiraj. If it weren’t for what he’s capable of doing and what Vikrant witnesses, then Purva wouldn’t be able to get her way with him, no matter what Vikrant’s father or anyone else says.

That’s what we’re going to have to have in our minds as we watch this show. Purva is beautiful, wealthy and powerful; you’d think she spent the last fifteen years being courted by every man that’s in her orbit. Yet, for some reason, she’s still obsessed with the humble Vikrant. Will we ever figure out why? Or do we just have to believe that Purva is so twisted that she waited all this time to come back to town and ruin this guy’s life?

It does feel like that, once Purva returns to Vikrant’s life, his path between being ready to start anew with Shikha to being ready to shoot his way to freedom is predetermined. He’ll likely have to get married to her now, under threat of his life from her father. He’ll still want to be with Shikha, but she’ll likely want nothing to do with him. And, in order to reclaim his life, he takes desperate measures.

Will there be shadings of story along the way? Sure. But we feel like we have most of the story’s major beats right, and that’s makes us lose interest. We feel like we’re going to have to wait around for Vikrant to stop being a doormat and take revenge, and we’re not all that interested in seeing cartoonish “bad guy” characters — including Purva — thwart him at every turn.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: After disposing of the body — one part at a time — a dazed Vikrant shows up at Purva’s Zumba studio in the middle of a class. He goes up to her, blood still on his shirt collar. He then passes out.

Sleeper Star: Shweta Tripathi as Shikha gets the nod here, because she’s going to play the aggrieved party in this love triangle, a thankless task for any actor. Let’s hope her character continues to be as strong as it’s written in the first episode.

Most Pilot-y Line: Do we really need to have the “Oops, I think you killed him?” plot point we saw in the first episode? That may seem edgy but it feels more gratuitous.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein is a well-acted show and has reasonably well-written dialogue. But it feels awfully over the top for a drama that’s supposed to be something that’s supposed to examine the grey areas in life.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.