Aranyak review: Raveena Tandon's debut OTT series will leave you intrigued and wanting for more

It has been a few years since we have seen stars make their comebacks. We have seen Sushmita Sen make an amazing comeback with Arya (whose second season was incidentally released today with Aranyak) and we had eagerly been waiting to see how Raveena Tandon and Madhuri Dixit 's debuts would turn out to be like and now, Aranyak has already released.

It has been three decades that Raveena Tandon has been a part of the industry and yet, with the release of Aranyak, the audience will see a new side to her as well. The trailer of the series had already raised our hopes, and after 6 episodes, all I can say is that you would not be disappointed. Raveena plays Kasturi Dogra, the SHO who takes a leave for a year to focus on the well-being of her family. One can get a glimpse of how career-oriented she is, and how much she is struggling to become the 'perfect mother' and the 'perfect wife' that society expects her to be. But, as soon as she puts her papers, she gets an interesting case that she had been waiting for in her career. This is when she decides to cancel her leave and work together with her replacement Angad Malik (played by Parambrata Chatterjee ) to solve the Aimee Baptiste case that shook Sironah and brought back the memories of the 'nar tendua' or leopard man, a legend that everyone in Sironah believes in and someone who committed 9 rapes and murders sone 19 years back.

The series helmed by Vinay Waikul has several plots and subplots running simultaneously in the narrative. The best part about it was the fact that all of these are given equal importance and we don't lose focus on anyone. By the end of the six episodes (yes, two more remain and we can very well believe that these two would be the most crucial ones for sure), there are many questions left that will leave you confounded and wanting for more. In fact, the episodes end at such a juncture that you will be forced to binge-watch the series. However, it will be at the end that we would be able to know how much of the mystery was resolved and whether there would be a season 2 or not.

Oddly enough, the trailer reminded me of Candy, that released on Voot. However, this show, for sure has several more layers and has been ably executed. Director Vinay Waikul, writer Charudutt Acharya and editors Smruti Ranjan Mishra and Rajdeep Mitra have kept the pace taut, keeping your excitement intact.

The performances in this series are just as strong. While many would be watching it for Raveena Tandon, it is she and Parambrata Chatterjee who actually do the heavy lifting together. Parambrata is a season Bengali actor, and even the Hindi industry now knows how good an actor he is and how well he can play a character with the supervision of an able director. He is pitch-perfect as Angad, a man who is trying to deal with his own past, while solving a crime in a place where he has no one to call his own. He forms a friendship with Kasturi, the inspector he replaced only to join forces with her later. Their dynamics and chemistry are brilliant.

Raveena Tandon has yet again proved that with the right script, she can be just anything. Here, she has to be an SHO who has to balance her professional life with personal, and deal with the consequences as the professional merges with the personal and her daughter is also on the line. She is given a different dialect to speak in and seldom do we see get her out of the character. In fact, it's praiseworthy that we do not see Raveena here, but just Kasturi Dogra. 

There are actors like Ashutosh Rana , Meghna Malik, Zakir Hussain and Indraneil Sengupta in pivotal roles and they all deliver their best in the series. 

And now, as I finish the remaining episodes, I will highly recommend that you watch it. This one is definitely going to leave you intrigued, at the edge of your seat and wanting for more.