Review: The Desi Audience Needs to Shield Itself from ‘Kavach’

‘Kavach..Kaali Shaktiyon Se’ is an attempt to cash in on the popularity of supernatural soap operas

Mahek Chahal, Vivek Dahiya and Mona Singh at the launch of Kavach (Photo Yogen Shah)

After the popular Naagin on Colors TV, which reportedly raked in huge TRPs, the channel seems to have found a new formula - spiking saas-bahu sagas with the supernatural. So we had the highly publicised Kavach - Kaali Shaktiyon Se premiering on Saturday night with Mona Singh, Mahek Chahal and Vivek Dahiya in the lead.

If you’ve seen the promo, you would already know what to expect:

Kavach means “shield” and from what we saw in the first episode, this new drama seems to be just as low on content as most of the drivel one gets to see on a GEC. You can see how the plot will unfold from a mile away.

The story begins with Nisha, who is Bundela khandaan’s to-be bahu, dying in a tragic accident because some evil power won’t let her marry her fiancé. It’s kind of like Karz, but in reverse. The narrative seems to be an attempt to pit black magic against belief in God in order to overpower evil.

The ‘evil spirit’ in Mahek Chahal coming out of the closet (Photo: Yogen Shah)

So Manjulika (Mahek Chahal), the ‘evil spirit’ is doing everything in her power to stop Rajbir Bundela (Vivek Dahiya) from getting hitched. Cut to 5 years later, Paridhi (Mona Singh) enters the scene. She’s at the same spot (literally) where Nisha lost her life. But, Paridhi has an inherent goodness in her to overpower all evil, and she does. She manages to get past the threshold despite all the negative forces stopping her, to get engaged to Rajbir.

Kavach is about Paridhi’s journey from being a non-believer in idol worship to becoming a believer. Yet, she also has absolute an faith in the goodness of the world. But, does being devout have to mean following customs and traditions to death? Really big question that.

The first episode had the drama quotient on a full high to complement the background music with remixed bhajans and VFX galore. If not the loud music, the gimmicky camerawork alone can give you a headache. The extremely tight shots don’t just distract, they downright annoy.

Moving on to the casting, apart from the central female leads, the other actors do a hack-job of keeping the storyline together. But full marks to the daaru-loving daadi, her dialogue delivery is seamless.

Ekta Kapoor, the trend-setter for the small screen, is the producer here and she seems to have hit upon yet another regressive hook to keep the desi audience tuned in.

Mona Singh and Vivek Dahiya promoting Kavach (Photo: Yogen Shah)

It’s not that the supernatural realm cannot be made interesting without low IQ mumbo-jumbo. What makes shows like The Walking Dead, The Vampire Diairies and Supernatural work amongst a huge audience worldwide is that – the characters have a background story, they are well-etched, they are personalities with shades of grey. Each member of the cast is given a chance to perform, not just act as fillers. Moreover, the storyline is well-thought out, so when the big reveal rolls in, the viewer is actually surprised. I don’t know if Kavach will do that, but I won’t be betting on it.

If this were one of those soaps which were bankrolled for infinite episodes depending on its popularity, the weak story line and narrative could be excusable. But with a reported 32-episode limited series, the audience should have a much more imaginative story and strong characters. If we could only look beyond the world of ‘leave-your-brains-behind-TV drama,’ the possibilities are endless.