Scam 2003: The Telgi Story Web Review - Ab-dull Telgi!

Scam 2003 The Telgi StoryOn SonyLIVShowrunner Hansal MehtaDir Tushar HiranandaniCast Gagan Dev Riar Sana Amin SheikhRating 25There is no Indian show Irsquove waited as eagerly for its second instalment as Scam 1992 The Harshad Mehta Story 2020 Which is this namely Scam 2003 The Telgi Story The first was a breakout series for the OTT platform SonyLIVEasily the best of its kind Excitingly detailing the rise and fall of the Bombay Stock Exchange Big Bull Harshad Mehta Bravely naming names Entertainingly recording events that shook up Indiarsquos stockmarket and personal finance Enough to make one realise the potential of a solid multilayered longform series as a place to store popular historyAt least on paper Scam 2003 is a similar attempt based on the life of Abdul Karim Telgi a Kannada crook who moved to Bombay to pull off a fake stamppaper scam running into unspecified uncountable croresThe only thing common between the two Scams as a series is the handpicked quality of its cast By which I mean practically everyone from the lead that is the newbie Gagan Dev Riar as Telgi to the old bureaucrat manning the governmentrsquos printing press in Nashik down to the ghazal singer Talat Aziz playingTelgirsquos fatherfigureNone of whom yoursquore used to on screen Which makes the OTT as such a revolution of sorts for matching firsttimers with appropriately prominent or walkon partsSuch that soon every aspiring actor in India it appears wouldrsquove made it to the screenmdashbecause they appear authentic enough for that one cameo at least that will suit their facepersonality the bestDiligent casting agents are neatly elevating this industry One of them Mukesh Chhabra the showrsquos casting director does a cameo as wellmdashfound throwing money at a Bombay dance barItrsquos an important sequence Given the first time I heard Telgirsquos story was in context of the dance bar itself thatrsquos been effectively banned in Mumbai since 2005In an early scene here an inmate in the lockup explains to Telgi how the dance bar and lsquohawalaatrsquo are similarmdashonce yoursquore in you keep coming backI was once told the reason Telgi eventually got caught is because hersquod blown close to a crore over a night at the South Bombay dancebar Topaz once Hersquod fallen for a bardancer Tarannum Khan A revenue officer was in the same room Intrigued he did a little research on who this bizarre bloke was and how he held that kinda liquid cashThatrsquos not exactly what happens in the series Telgi does call attention to himself however doing the same thing This public display of wealth is a terrible idea for anyone with much to hide especially with multiple creditors or stakeholders in an illegal dhandaPost that night we watch the cutrates of all of Telgirsquos conduits chiefly politicians and police go up There is a lesson on security in anonymity for all businessmen here And which business in India is 100 per cent clean anywayOnly that Telgi unlike say Harshad Mehta is hardly a businessman What does he do He prints fake stamppapers used for all legal documents that the government makes R33000 crore annually fromItrsquos the same as printing fake currency notes Earlier in a Sholaylike train robbery Telgi and his men used to replace certified stamp papers with fake ones while they got ferried on rail Thatrsquos how he started The show is based on Sanjay Singhrsquos book Telgi Scam A Reporterrsquos DiaryYou could see it as a crime procedural therefore Only that it shouldnrsquot take more than a few minutes to explain this process Which is probably why like so much of peak TV content that are borderline decentmdashScam 2003 feels like the long first cut of a film loosely extended into a seriesIs it authentically journalistic enough How can it be when Telgi is who he is but everybody around him feel fake like pure fiction What with say a ldquosecularrdquo party run by a ldquoremote controlrdquo that came to power with white for a party flag in 1995 Maharashtra I can see why you canrsquot name names unlike Scam 1992 Only Telgi is no moreWill the show do for the lovely lead actor Riar thoughmdashportly Muslim man with hennaed hair altogether without a roarmdashwhat Scam 1992 did for the solid Pratik Gandhi as Harshad MehtaHighly unlikely Because as against Mehta Telgirsquos story has got no other dimension let alone any messianic or redemptive quality to the lead character Besides that he wants to fake it to make it There are simply no layers Or maybe itrsquos the series for what it encapsulatesmdashmaking you feel so thandadistant all through As if yoursquore going through the chronology of Telgirsquos life rather than ever peeking into his head At no point did I find myself rooting for this guy which is the guilty pleasure that makes filmsshows about bad men so alluring anywayWhat did I feel patiently labouring over this in three instalments over two days That itrsquos not a particular badly made show Just a bore frankly And this is only the first part of the sequel Since Irsquove started will finish the second one too whenever itrsquos out This time the expectations will be way lower And thatrsquos probably a great thing always

Scam 2003: The Telgi Story Web Review - Ab-dull Telgi!

Scam 2003: The Telgi Story
On: SonyLIV
Showrunner: Hansal Mehta
Dir: Tushar Hiranandani
Cast: Gagan Dev Riar, Sana Amin Sheikh
Rating: 2/5

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Home / Entertainment / Web Series / Article / Scam 2003: The Telgi Story Web Review - Ab-dull Telgi!

Scam 2003: The Telgi Story Web Review - Ab-dull Telgi!

Scam 2003: The Telgi StoryOn: SonyLIVShowrunner: Hansal MehtaDir: Tushar HiranandaniCast: Gagan Dev Riar, Sana Amin SheikhRating: 2/5

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Mid-Day Fast

Scam 2003: The Telgi Story
On: SonyLIV
Showrunner: Hansal Mehta
Dir: Tushar Hiranandani
Cast: Gagan Dev Riar, Sana Amin Sheikh
Rating: 2/5