Scoop Series Review: Hansal Mehta’s Valentine to Honest Print Journalism

Ambition – unbridled, all-consuming – comes with a heavy price in the show Hansal Mehta, His last series, the mega-hit Scam 1992, told the story of Harshad Mehta, the son of a simple cloth merchant, who emerges as a big fraud. Harshad’s downfall, both in life and the web-show, was his own doing, yet he – at least for a while – enjoyed the opulence and the high life. The situation is cleverly changed for Jagriti Pathak (Karishma Tanna), a driven journalist and the protagonist of Hansal’s brand-new series, Scoop, Though as brash and opinionated as Harshad, she is his superior ideologically and morally, accumulating front page bylines rather than material wealth. It’s a niche hustle, and it doesn’t pay very well.

The series is based on the memoir of former crime journalist Jigna Vora, Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Jail, It begins in 2011 with Jagriti – a stand-in for Vora – giving a tip to a gang-related shootout in Mumbai. His most brilliant and rigorous contemporary is Jayadeb Sen (light day based and played with serious magnetism by Prosenjit Chatterjee), who wrongly tips him off about a larger conspiracy involving gangsters and the police. Jagruti taps into her network of small-time informers, but fails to land an interview with gangster Chhota Rajan. However, soon, Rajan dialed her office and agreed to talk. The interview fast forwards and Jagruti leaves for a family holiday in Kashmir.

Needless to say the holiday has been cut short. In a chilling early-morning sequence that comprises the first episode, Jaidev is shot by Rajan’s sharpshooters (J Dey was killed in a similar manner outside his Powai residence, That a former colleague covering the same beat has been murdered in cold blood doesn’t immediately bother Jagruti. Instead, she moves swiftly, passing theories about the murder even as her editor, the more emotionally affected Imran (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), advises caution and restraint. Soon, Jagruti’s world is turned upside down. The call turns up a recording of Rajan confessing that he was instigated by Jagruti to kill Sen. He was arrested under Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA) charges and kept in judicial custody.

Scoop – co-written by Mrinmoyee Lagoo Vaikul and Mirat Trivedi with dialogues by Karan Vyas – ambitiously and at times clumsily combines multiple genres: prison, courtroom and newsroom drama, conspiracy thriller, true crime, investigative mystery. Jagriti’s innocence is never questioned; We know for sure that he is being framed, not entirely by whom or why. The series portrays in detail the prejudices that a female journalist working in a male-dominated beat may receive. From time to time, the executive relations of awakening are questioned; With Imran, with the apparently violent JCP Shroff (Harman Baweja), even with the deceased Sen. In prison, she is referred to as Rajan’s ‘girlfriend’, prompting similar indictments in the press. The police use his relative influence – minor favors pulled here and there, a loud word to Sen – against him. Her personal life appears to be in disarray: a single mother, she is forced to send her son to boarding school (her ex-husband and a lover are both cold, selfish men).

Karishma Tanna in a scene from ‘Scoop’

Remembering Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, with his glasses, beard and moral rectitude from liev schreiber the limelight (2015), Karishma Tanna’s got the speed and nimbleness of a high-functioning, niche-landing journalist like Jagriti. In the initial interrogation scene, she keeps her cool even though the walls are clearly closing in. The prison scenes are gory and brutal, as Jagruti stands up to an impressionable inmate and later (briefly) has a falling out with a terror-accused. Thankfully Hansal keeps the drama moving, and there is an interesting subplot involving Imran’s chauvinistic heir and his wife. It’s also fitting that, given the middle-class Gujarati milieu of Jagruti’s household, actor Deven Bhojani gets the sweetest role as her affectionate, signature-canvassing uncle.

Although it is set only a decade earlier, Scoop Feels like a valentine to honest print journalism in India. Imran talks about ‘sensitivity’ more than once and is reprimanded in return. The vintage interiors of their struggling ‘Eastern Edge’ contrast the glass walls and sleek cubicles of rival ‘CityMirror’. The final episodes are a blur of murky news reports and frenzied television cameras. “I want to be there,” says Deepa (Inayat Sood), an aspiring trainee reporter and the scariest character.

Even in the end, it is not journalism that brings out the awakening, but a bunch of provocative arguments wittily presented in court; Speculation turned upon speculation. Hansel ends on a depressing note with a slew of journalists killed or imprisoned in recent years. Forget feeling resentful; I’m surprised it even made the cut.

The Scoop is currently streaming on Netflix