OK Computer Review: Anand Gandhi’s Bizarre Hotstar Series Is ‘Pav Bhaji’

OK Pc — the brand new Hotstar Specials sequence — desires to be a whole lot of issues. At its core, it is designed as a sci-fi comedy. Whereas it is tonally impressed by Douglas Adams’ seminal 1979 novel The Hitchhiker’s Information to the Galaxy, its filmmaking type takes after modern-day mockumentaries equivalent to The Workplace and Trendy Household. However then, OK Pc is wrapped in a whodunit thriller thriller plot, which seemingly attracts from the works of Isaac Asimov and HBO’s Westworld sequence. Ship of Theseus director Anand Gandhi, a author on OK Pc, has acknowledged the Adams and Asimov inspirations. He mentioned that they — together with creators, administrators, and fellow writers Pooja Shetty and Neil Pagedar — would always ask: “What would Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati, or Govinda do? That is the mindset of the sequence […] wacky and zany.”

Sadly, OK Computer fails to emulate one of the best qualities of these inspirations. Within the title of being comedic, the OK Pc writers drive quirkiness and idiosyncrasy in all places. Each character is eccentric, has odd mannerisms, and says probably the most random of issues. OK Pc is bonkers and far and wide at occasions. As for the narrative, exposition is stuffed in each nook. It does attempt to be inventive at occasions, by making use of animated interludes or being self-aware about its monologues. However these are uncommon respites. So as to add to the expository mess, the OK Pc script is riddled with logical gaps and different points. There’s little character growth because the six episodes — I’ve seen all of them — are overtly plot-driven, however even that’s messy. It is mindless how issues occur, and why they go in a sure route.

OK Pc additionally sometimes acquired on my nerves. This can be a dialogue-heavy present, to the purpose it seems like OK Pc is competing with the Tina Fey comedy 30 Rock. That’s not an issue in itself. The difficulty is that one of many main characters is a sentient AI robotic referred to as Ajeeb (voiced by Pagedar, and performed by Ullas Mohan), whose voice is particularly grating on the ears. I continuously wished to punch Ajeeb via the display so it will cease speaking. At one level, OK Pc inserted a high-pitched tone as a result of it was one thing the characters needed to endure as nicely. I muted the present. Who thought this was a good suggestion? These selections are deliberate little doubt, however you are not going to attain extra viewers if they can not stand to even hearken to your present.

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Set in close to future 2031, OK Pc opens in Goa and dives into its plot straightaway: a self-driving automotive has killed a pedestrian. The person’s face has been mangled so badly that it is unidentifiable — OK Pc turns that right into a joke, with each character referring to the sufferer all through as “Pav Bhaji” — and there is not any match for his DNA too in any database. Enter Goa’s cyber cell ACP Saajan Kundu (Vijay Varma), a self-described lone wolf closely depending on others, who deems it a homicide. However Laxmi Suri (Radhika Apte), the CEO-founder of a non-profit that advocates for moral remedy of robots, objects — stating that an AI may by no means kill a human because it goes in opposition to Asimov’s three legal guidelines of robotics. There’s historical past between Saajan and Laxmi, who appear to have cut up due to their differing values on the involvement of robots in human society.

Saajan’s investigation quickly leads him to Ajeeb, a one-of-a-kind robotic that kickstarted India’s AI revolution. If you happen to let OK Pc inform it (which it does by way of a half-episode of exposition), Ajeeb was acquired so nicely when it was created years in the past that it was dubbed a messiah. It primarily solved all of India’s issues, together with spiritual concord — or moderately, the dearth of it. That is probably the best (unintentional) joke OK Pc is able to. Extra so given how Ajeeb is offered as naïve and terrified. However Ajeeb quickly went in a brand new route that got here as a betrayal to most Indians, who pulled him down from his pedestal and all however discarded him. Forgotten and undesirable, Ajeeb has been lacking for some time earlier than Saajan’s staff runs into him throughout their investigation. Saajan is satisfied that Ajeeb is responsible social gathering, however he’ll need to undergo Laxmi.

As a result of that is not sufficient plot and with one eye on a season 2 (that has but to be greenlit), OK Pc additional expands by bringing in Pushpak Shakur (Jackie Shroff), the chief of an “anti-tech, anti-science, anti-vax, and anti-gravity ecoterrorist” group referred to as JJM, Jigyasu Jagrati Manch. (Sidenote, however is not anti-vax and anti-gravity, no matter that even means, primarily anti-science? Pushpak additionally would not consider in clothes, which leads to Disney+ Hotstar having to censor its personal authentic. That is one aspect of Indian theatres I’ve undoubtedly not missed on this unending pandemic.) Pushpak confesses that he is behind the dying, although it is instantly clear that he may need ulterior motives. Shakur serves as a mouthpiece for the OK Pc writers’ values and viewpoints, just like the present wanted one other expository machine.

Jackie Shroff as Pushpak Shakur in OK Pc
Photograph Credit score: Vinayak Kashinth Vetkar/Disney

When it is not consumed by narrative calls for, OK Pc makes an attempt to ruminate on the impression of AI robots on human society (like I, Robot from Asimov) and that we have gone overboard with know-how (like Hitchhiker’s). The world of OK Pc is stuffed with robots able to advanced language processing and understanding however they appear to share restricted rights. And like the Radiohead album it is named after (which in itself was a line from Hitchhiker’s), OK Pc tries to be political. Nevertheless it barely registers, ending up as jabs moderately than deep-cut observations.

Weirdly sufficient, OK Pc finally ends up saying probably the most via its picture of India. On this close to future, India is the chief of the world from science (India saved the planet from warming, Laxmi is the Greta Thunberg) to soccer (India now beats European giants handily). It is half wishful pondering and half pop nationalism. That does not mirror at this time’s India in any respect, which makes OK Pc appear like an alt-history sci-fi sequence. However OK Pc remains to be very a lot an extension of at this time’s India elsewhere. It is nearly as if OK Pc is saying that we’re sure to finish up who we’re as a individuals, regardless of the technological progress, a shift in grassroots priorities, or superstar teenage activists (if we do not jail them first).

Gandhi additionally used the “India” motive to justify OK Pc’s lo-fi aesthetic — it is paying homage to Hitchhiker’s once more, in order that works — although in my view, it is extra doubtless a consequence of what the finances allowed. There’s extra proof of that in a portion of OK Pc that’s set inside a VR online game (it is publicly accessible however described as a darkish web online game as if which means something), given how cartoonish the graphics are. And oh, the VR headsets look precisely just like the Oculus ones, humorous given it is 2031 and India is the projected chief in each division.

Vijay Varma as Saajan Kundu in OK Pc
Photograph Credit score: Disney

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is among the funniest books I’ve ever learn. And since and regardless of it being over 40 years outdated, we now have and haven’t come a good distance. Adams envisioned a world overrun by know-how that was extra annoying than useful. It is why the reply to life, the universe, and every little thing, the e-book’s supercomputer Deep Thought deduces, is 42. However as our world has turn out to be overrun by know-how, we have witnessed a complete vary of surprising penalties. OK Pc is born out of that worldview, that know-how has achieved extra unhealthy than good. Right this moment’s damaged “digital India”, extrapolated to 2031 with sentient AI robots, is ripe fodder for a sci-fi sequence. However OK Pc has not one of the e-book’s satirist powers or the mind to think about the latter world.

Its creators have digested a number of the world’s main sci-fi works, however what they’ve produced is actually the sequence equal of Deep Thought’s reply. It is Pav Bhaji.

All six episodes of OK Pc at the moment are streaming on Hotstar and Disney+ Hotstar.