Poacher Review: Alia Bhatt-Backed Show on Poaching Is Raw, Impressive & Incisive

A Delhi-based computer programmer Alan Joseph (Roshan Mathew) asks his wife Achala (Ranjitha Menon), “Didn’t your mother used to say that slow flame cooks the best food?” In essence, this summarises Amazon Prime’s latest Poacher – a slow burn that ends up becoming a delectable show.

Richie Mehta’s show is based on the 2015 investigation into an ivory poaching ring in India. The protagonist is a Kerala forest range officer Mala Jogi (Nimisha Sajayan) who is asked to leave behind her comfortable life in a bird sanctuary to join an elite and secretive task force by her senior Neel Banerjee (a formidable Dibyendu Bhattacharya). A former RAW agent, Banerjee is now a forest department director who is in a literal race against time and is driven by the need to leave behind a healthy environment for the next generation.

Mala Jogi is at the show’s centre – her need to protect the majestic elephant comes not only from a sense of moral duty but from guilt. She believes she must atone for the sins of her hunter father because ‘who else will’? Her home is filled with adopted dogs who all flock to her every time she steps foot into the house – the “someone who loves dogs, or rather someone dogs seem so comfortable around, must be a good person” message is clear.

The most interesting aspect of Poacher is how it’s highly populated by animals – this is a story of wildlife conservation, so to focus solely on the human characters would feel like cruel irony.

Several shots feature animals, both in the forests and the cities. When we see them in the city setting, they look out-of-place but the same isn’t true for when see a car drive down the forest roads. It’s a brutal reminder of how humans have encroached upon animals’ spaces to the point where them loitering in their natural habitat seems unnatural – like their freedom is a grace.

From eagles denoting surveillance to a bat showing up during a mission in the dark, the animals often also act as motifs in the story. And yet, people Mala and her team meet along the way can’t grasp what is so urgent about saving ‘some animals’. When the permanence of human life itself is under threat, they make the decision to not extend that empathy to animals. This makes the show’s messaging even more urgent. Why do we feel reluctant to extend empathy to someone we unfairly consider to not be on the same footing as us? Does this apathy extend to our fellow humans?

There’s a shadow of Mehta’s previous work Delhi Crime in the show as well -- the nuanced understanding of security forces and the staunch idealism of the protagonist for instance. Even as Mala, Alan, and Neel catch one poacher after another, they must reconcile with the reality that the poaching has happened under their team’s watch.

Poacher avoids whitewashing the security forces by placing the main team as a few good people who must themselves bypass bureaucracy to get the job done. Mala often locks horns with a suspended range officer Vijay Babu (Ankith Madhav) but the show points out that his incompetence comes from being lazy, not from being a bad person. Is laziness in a situation like this the same as being complicit? That is for you to decide.

I couldn’t help but think of The Jengaburu Curse, the well-written show let down by its shabby execution but Poacher doesn’t fall into that trap (pun unintended) – it is technically sound. The camera captures the wide expanses of the jungles like a nature documentary, giving us enough space to marvel at the beauty but to also see how small the protagonists look trudging through. In moments of high emotion, the camera gives us ample close-ups and reaction shots to take us from viewer to empathiser.

The one issue with the show is that the narrative lulls in the middle – perhaps it’s because episode 2 is one of the show’s most impressive. The episodes that follow threaten to lose your attention. That is not to say that they’re bad episodes; it’s just that the runtime is so big that the one episode in between that’s about 30 minutes long feels like a breath of fresh air. But perhaps if you’re not binge-watching the show, it won’t be such a big issue.

In some places, the show feels too dramatic, especially in the last episode when the entire mission comes to a close. The ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ battle is finally at its last legs and the stakes are higher than ever. Regrettably, the intense dramatisation makes the scenes feel a little fake, which is a pity for a show that even managed to make the CGI animals look eerily real (except that one baby monkey on a pole but it was too cute to fault).

The show is never devoid of its natural setting – from the distinct curse words and the sound of traffic and stray dogs when the show shifts to Delhi to the ambient sounds of the forest that creeps in every other second. Even the way multiple languages have been woven into the show is impressive – it never feels like the makers are trying to create a pan-Indian show. It doesn’t feel fabricated.

Neel speaks to Mala and Arun in Hindi and English and the duo themselves often communicate in Malayalam (with fleeting moments of English). In the few moments Neel gets at home, with his wife or niece, he shifts to Bengali.

Roshan Mathew as Alan has a Family Man-esque arc – while Manoj Bajpayee’s tackling of the personal and professional feels frustrated to the point of being comical, Mathew’s method is more earnest. Even the more cheesy scenes feel adorable because of Mathew and Ranjitha Menon’s chemistry. I found myself wishing there was more of Kani Kusruti to watch.

And how does one forget Dibyendu Bhattacharya. He flits in and out of the show like a mystical entity – a mentor who is prepared to be past his hay day and is making a last-ditch effort to leave behind a better world and department. Even his love for turtles that starts off feeling like a quirk or strategy becomes a poignant metaphor for age.

Then there is the protagonist – the fantastic Nimisha Sajayan who holds the show’s fabric together. Everyone is constantly watching Maya – either waiting for instructions or waiting for to break or to see the person she’s hiding behind her mask. Her idealism doesn’t feel fraudulent because it’s deeply rooted into her psyche and her past. Even her efforts to save the environment and rooted in a self-serving need to absolve herself of guilt.

Let's take a look at the character Poonam Verma (Sapna Sand). When we meet her, she seems formidable but her equation with Mala soon becomes of a insolent child being disciplines. She is so confident in her impunity that she can afford to not take any of this too seriously - only acting out as an immediate ploy for survival.

It's clear that Poacher is a show that understands the psyche of its human characters as much as it is able to extend empathy to its animal characters. It’s one instance of a show’s heart being as big as, if not bigger than its premise.

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'Poacher': The Real-Life Story of Elephant Poaching That Stunned Kerala in 2015