Cast: Tejasswi Prakash, Ravi Kishan, Anud Singh Dhaka
Director: Ajay Bhuyan
Streaming On: Amazon MX Player
Language: Hindi
Runtime: 6 episodes of 50 minutes each
If you ever wondered what happens when you pick a pulp fiction from the 90s and put a gangster world of the 2010s around it, sprinkle it with some illogical testosterone-charged gundas, and you get Psycho Saiyaan. It is a web series that tries so hard to be a psychological thriller that it actually ends up giving the audience a complex and a headache for me!
Directed by Ajay Bhuyan, the show is a love story between Kartik Pandey (Anud Singh Dhaka), and Charulata (Tejasswi Prakash). Charu – the most sought after woman in Katni, visits Ujjain and bumps into Kartik, a few years younger to her. They fall in love, but Charu ghosts Kartik, telling him that this love story cannot find its forever! Enters Ravi Kishan as the gangster Huntry, who is the master of Charulata and treats her as his s*x toy! Bizarre right? Wait, it has just started!
Psycho Saiyaan Review: What’s It About:
From the very first episode, this show makes nonsensical twists and turns, which are lame and do not require a script to be honest! They just make no sense! The basic point of this series is that love makes you do crazy things! But each and every character in this web series is so stupid and morally lame that you root for none! At one point, I seriously wanted all of them to jump into some well and end this stupidity at once and for all!
Psycho Saiyaan Review: What Works:
The show attempts to deconstruct the obsessive lover trope of Bollywood, but while the narrative is too faltered to even begin with, the show only works because of its actors!
Psycho Saiyaan Review: Star Performance:
Tejasswi Prakash enters the OTT world looking like a million bucks but acting like she is confused as much as the script! She plays Charu, the prettiest girl in Katni, a town in Madhya Pradesh. She is the trophy everyone wants. Tejasswi actually tries to give this paper-thin character some soul. She cries well, she fears well, and she stares into the distance with more depth than the entire plot. It is high time the digital space gives her a script that does not treat her like a damsel in distress who just happens to be in the script for crying and glamorous crying!
Then comes Ravi Kishan. God bless this man. He walks into the frame as Huntry Chauhan with the energy of a man who knows the show is a mess and has decided to have the time of his life anyway. He is loud, he is menacing, and he is the only reason you let this web series reach its end. He plays the gangster with such unapologetic vibes that he almost makes the illogical dialogues sound like a poem. I mean almost!
Psycho Saiyaan Review: What Doesn’t Work:
As Kartik Pandey, Anud Singh Dhaka is tasked with navigating a character arc that moves from a destiny-obsessed romantic soul to a full-blown toxic stalker. Unfortunately, the performance gets stuck in a middle ground that is more irritating than intimidating, for obviously, no fault of his! In the initial episodes, Dhaka portrays Kartik’s poetic sensibilities with a sincerity that feels dated. But this destiny-driven lover lacks the necessary charm to make the audience root for him.
The problem with this show isn’t the actors; it’s that the show asks us to believe in a world where everyone is a psycho, but nobody has a therapist. The chemistry is less about sparks and more about Why is this even happening, and What crazy nonsensical world this is.
This one is a more problematic Raanjhana, mixed with a very light version of Hasseen Dillruba entering the pulp-fiction novel genre, but not making any effort to decode how pulp fiction works!
Psycho Saiyaan Review: Last Words:
Watch it if you’re a die-hard Tejasswi fan or if you want to see Ravi Kishan‘s masterclass in how to carry a sinking ship. Otherwise, thank me 1000 times that I told you to run away from this one, as fast as you could!
0.5 stars!
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