Mai: Sakshi Tanwar's performance in this engaging Netflix revenge drama commands your attention

The world of Mai is designed to suck you in no matter how much you might not want to buy what’s playing out in front of your eyes. The Netflix series about a mother struggling to accept the circumstances surrounding her daughter’s death and sets to uncover link by link who is behind her murder.

Sheel Chaudhary, however, is no iron-willed hot headed revenge seeker. A simple homemaker and a nurse in an old age home, she is unable to even face her daughter’s killer in a courtroom without panicking and wanting to puke her guts out.

She’s sloppy with her investigative skills and also unsure of what she’s getting herself into when she discovers deep rooted medical scam behind all her questions and comes face to face with the merciless and powerful people running it. This thriller then takes shape of an intriguing revenge drama as Shakhi Tanwar’s Sheel tries with all her might to push back and seek redemption outside the constraints of the law.

Sheel forges alliances with dangerous men to meet her goals and uses her knowledge of medical drugs to put down henchmen. She often gets backed into a corner and even gets played for her innocence and politeness but she never backs down.

While Sheel’s need for redemption drives the narrative, Mai has many sub-plots playing out on the side-lines in this six episode series. Sheel’s domestic life falling to pieces due to her glaring absence from home, her dead daughter’s relationship with a cop who has taken lead on the case of her death, a powerful medical scam running businessman’s death resulting a power play - all forces come into action as Sheel steps into mucky waters to find answers.

Mai starts at an absolutely riveting note, wasting no time in putting Sakshi Tanwar ’s criminally underrated acting chops to good use. However, the twisted tale drags a little as each sub-plot in this over crowded world wait in queue to justify its presence. Somewhere in the middle this small town gloomy tale even goes classic Bollywood introducing a maniacal twin of the dead businessman who goes guns blazing to find his brother’s accomplice who he believes back stabbed him. The whole

It is one plotline that doesn’t feel like it fits and seems like an attempt to spice up this slow burn thriller which didn’t need it. Mai, however, manages to make you play along for the sake of answers. While we have seen stories like Mai like before, the most prominent one that comes to mind being Sridevi ’s swansong Mom, what sets this series apart is its well rounded storytelling.

Mai doesn’t put blinkers the moment it sets Sakshi’s character out for revenge. It offers explanations for what makes its characters the way they are. Sheel’s character for example has accepted her position as secondary member of her household thanks to years of conditioning and patriarchy. But as a mother in her that refuses to be at peace at the slightest possibility that there’s something bigger at play behind her daughter’s death.

Rima Sen’s character Neelam on the other hand is a woman trying take her place in a man’s world, as criminal as it may be, after being recused from a world of sex trade. You feel for her as her ability to run a business is questioned every step of the way.

These characters are all flawed and the story doesn’t shy away from reflecting them. Mai has the potential to move you emotionally and yet doesn’t make you dwell on these moments for long to keep the thriller aspect of the story moving.

If there’s one highlight that binds this whole narrative together and elevates it, then it is the performances. Sakshi Tanwar runs the show in a performance worth celebrating. She plays Sheel with an innocence which is hard even when she’s beating a man with a cane with all her might.

Anant Vidhaat Sharma, Vivek Mushran and Prashant Narayanan are the other stand out performers of the series.

If you are looking for a new weekend binge, Mai could definitely be your pick as a moving yet thrilling tale that can can’t stop watching till the very end.