1000 Babies Review | A gripping serial killer story that stands up to Rahman’s flawed Malayalam

For a non-Malay viewer, the new Hotstar series 1000 Babies, directed and co-written by Najeem Koya, will feel like an intriguing concept that captures their interest due to the enormity of the central event. I say this because one of the biggest things that bothered me while watching the series was the way several characters, especially the main character Aji Kurien, played by Rahman, spoke in Malayalam. The logical inconsistencies here and there and the overall over-the-top dramatic tone can be forgiven to a certain extent, but this misjudgment in casting is an obvious mistake.

In 2010, a woman named Sarah Ouseph, who had worked as a head nurse, was taken to hospital after suffering a serious injury. Before she died, she asked the doctor to bring a lawyer and a police officer to the hospital. Sarah gave them both two letters – one for the police and one for the judge. What we see in the series “1000 Babies” is the content of this letter and its traumatic, long-lasting impact that caused problems in many people’s lives.

For a creative idea to come to fruition, an important step is presenting the idea to investors, and a memorable summary is critical to this stage of development. In the case of 1000 Babies, I think this aspect would have been easier for Najeem Koya and his co-writer Arouz Irfan. Even though the visual scope of this story is minimal, the psychological element as you ponder the impact of the heinous act will have you thinking about the various possibilities. The episodic structure feels more interesting because the story becomes very exciting as it was difficult to see the pattern of the killer due to the large data pool.

The dramatic expansion of the content from the bullet point level was a bit disappointing for me. The story is ultimately a police investigation, and there are many cinematic, familiar elements in the depiction of that investigation. It’s not the production style, but the development of the story that keeps you interested in the series. The backstories of certain characters don’t really disrupt the core idea because they have no direct connection. The digital wall and the way the special team operates take away the realism of the story. At one point we see them getting angry because information about this top secret investigation has been leaked. As they were discussing who this mole might be, I thought, “Dude, there’s three people sitting right behind you, and they’re not deaf.”

They say half the job is done when you cast the right actor for the role. Almost three main characters in the series “1000 Babies” felt like bad casting choices. In Rahman’s case, it feels more like they could have done something writing-wise to salvage this performance. If your lead actor has difficulty pronouncing the words correctly, why burden him with increasingly challenging Malayalam words? Instead of making this character a Malayali, they would have made him a Rishiraj Singh character and mixed in more English words in the dialogues, that would have made the experience less annoying for the viewer. Second on the list is Ashwin Kumar. He plays the role of a struggling screenwriter and here too you can see him stumbling over dialogues and I really thought someone should have dubbed for him. Last on the list is actor Manu, whose Palakkadan accent looked really exaggerated. In fact, the guy who played the role of Kalesh gave a more authentic performance.

Neena Gupta plays a very important character in the series as Sarah Ouseph and has relatively little screen time. In terms of performance and casting choice, it was perfect, even if the voice actor had a hard time getting the lip sync right. The most impressive actor in my opinion was Sanju Shivram who played a key role in the series and he was really good at portraying three different shades of the character. You could see the gradual development of this character in his performance. Irshad, Shaju Sreedhar, Adil Ibrahim, Radhika Radhakrishnan, Sirajudheen, Shalu Rahim etc. were good in their respective roles while Joy Mathew and Dileep Menon’s performances seemed a bit stiff, especially the dialogue delivery.

As for the way the series was presented, there are flaws and familiarities. But as I said, there is something deeply disturbing about the scale of the idea, and it actually offers the possibility of exploring the unthinkable. So if in future episodes they can think beyond mocking the right-wing and grapple with the gray and complicated implications of such a scenario, I think the series can live up to its tantalizing premise.