‘Brown’ (2026) ZEE5 Series Review - Karisma Kapoor Shines in an Otherwise Forgettable Thriller

For anyone who grew up watching Karisma Kapoor in the early 2000s or even the 90s, the sight of her drinking alcohol and smoking in Abhinay Deo's Brown might come as a jolting surprise. Here is an actor whom you might mostly associate with movies like Coolie No. 1, Biwi No. 1, Raja Babu, and Raja Hindustani. You have a certain image of her in your mind, and it shatters before your eyes as soon as you see Kapoor, as DCP Rita Brown, carrying psychological wounds and a hardened expression while rolling a joint or gulping down whiskey. The character Kapoor plays—that of a haunted investigator burdened by a tragic past and battling her inner demons—might not be entirely original. Such characters are common in serial killer thrillers. Nonetheless, Kapoor is so flawless in the role that one is almost shocked she wasn't the actor who popularized this archetype herself. She brings fresh air to a stale convention, lending solid emotional weight to her lines, gestures, and expressions. Observe her in the scene where her colleague, Arjun (Surya Sharma), asks whether she is going to meet the source with whom they had spoken earlier. Rita initially says no, only to add seconds later something along the lines of, "Haan, matlab samajh lo waisa hi kuch." Just look at Kapoor's face when she delivers this line. Her expression slightly contorts, and there are subtle pauses between the words. It feels as if she is processing what she's saying instead of mechanically delivering dialogue.

In Brown, this might be Deo's most significant achievement: he not only makes Kapoor's Rita feel alive but also makes the people around her seem somewhat real. There is a sense of history and camaraderie between Rita and a postmortem specialist, something especially noticeable when the latter apologizes after Rita lands in professional trouble at one point. You also get Arjun's perspective when he tells Rita to judge him by putting herself in his shoes and brings up job security. Arjun, like Rita, has his own personal issues to contend with. He, too, has lost people close to him and has a father to care for whose health doesn't appear to be in the best shape. It's a pity, then, that Deo doesn't develop these aspects of the story. He drops them in like mood pieces meant to embellish the aesthetic. No wonder the father's health ceases to be an issue after a while, and Rita's mushy flashbacks amount to little more than an excuse for her to mope around—stylishly. They also tie into the main plot in the most obvious way possible: to help her move on, to help her achieve peace.

Brown, in other words, is jam-packed with standard crime-thriller components, and while it's adapted from Abheek Barua's book City of Death (which I have not read), there is little here that justifies the adaptation. Why, Deo might as well have assembled various recognizable pieces from other crime thrillers. Perhaps he was fascinated by the material's assertion that most women suffer violence at the hands of their own family members, that they live in a world controlled by powerful men, that they can't even trust professionals to help them. It's not as if all the women are innocent, either. Meghna Malik's Nonnie is unable to fully revolt against her husband; another wife enables her husband's sexual assault of their son's wife; and a girl's best friend betrays her by getting involved with her boyfriend. It's a bad world, and Deo, who made Delhi Belly and Blackmail, might have been seduced by all the darkness. Unfortunately, he doesn't proceed to unearth any roots of black comedy from this demented, unbalanced landscape. Rather, Deo opts for a sober, solemn serial killer story that wails, mourns, and hits you only intermittently—as in the scene where Rita and Arjun listen to a recorded confession. The silence that follows leaves you stunned. In another scene, a policeman pulls out old files and lists various crimes committed against women, which devastates Arjun. At the same time, he still needs to solve the murder case at hand, so he asks the policeman to look for a pattern. The underlying message practically screams at you in bold letters.

I know the story unfolds in a Kolkata that could reasonably be described as hell, but does that mean Deo had to generate such grubby images? Forget the fact that they make the series visually dull and unremarkable; when Janice (Soni Razdan) and Bertha (Helen) complained about the heat while fanning themselves, I found it hard to believe them because the weather looked cool and cloudy—where is the sun? This is what happens when little attention is paid to the visual texture of a series or film, when the colors seem determined to manufacture an illusion of dread. Beneath all the talk about weighty issues like crimes against women, Brown is just another simple-minded show where a character looks at pictures of birds in an apartment and concludes that the victim sought freedom. It's inadvertently hilarious, and Brown as a whole lacks any real punch to the gut; it's utterly forgettable. But hey, at least there is Karisma Kapoor in very fine form. She alone is almost worth the whole ordeal.

Final Score - [4/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
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Publisher at Midgard Times