Samantar Review: Swwapnil Joshi’s series is an interesting take on destiny and fate

By Vandana Srivastawa

on March 16, 2020

Series: Samantar

Cast: Swwapnil Joshi, Tejaswani Pandit, Ganesh Revadekar, Jayant Savarkar, Nitish Bharadwaj

Director: Satish Rajwade

The new MX Player web series Samantar is what we need as we self-quarantine ourselves in our homes in the Coronavirus scare and wait for theatres and malls and other public places to reopen. The series made in Marathi and dubbed in Hindi, Telugu and Tamil is a suspense and thrilling tale of a man who is at his wits’ end grappling with his mundane lives and myriad failures. Samantar (Parallel) tells the story of a self-fulfilling prophecy of Swwapnil Joshi as Kumar Mahajan whose life changes after a man having a similar destiny known as Sudarshan Chakrapani enters his life. The life that Kumar is living is the life that Chakrapani has already lived, and thereby hangs the mystery and the cliffhanger. Will Kumar be able to control his present and change his future after meeting Chakrapani? The first season lasts nine episodes and ends on a cliffhanger that promises further thrills, twists and turns in the second season.

The series is the digital debut of Swwapnil Joshi and director Satish Rajwade. After collaborating successfully on writer Suhas Shirwalkar’s novel Duniyadari they have teamed up once again for Samantar which is also written by Shirwalkar. Swwapnil as Kumar in Samantar is down and out of his luck. His job is going downhill and so is his marital and family life. In a bid to resort to desperate means his friend and colleague Sharad (Ganesh Revadekar) take him to visit a renowned palmist (Jayant Savarkar). However, the visit turns out to be unfruitful as the astrologer refuses to reveal his future saying, “I have read this palm before.” He only gives out one clue the name of the man with whom Kumar shares his fate – Sudarshan Chakrapani.

Kumar makes his life’s mission to find Sudarshan Chakrapani to understand and maybe correct whatever ills are going to befall him in his life. The series takes a dramatic turn from its soppy Mumbai locales as Kumar gets onto Sudarshan’s trail which takes him from the metro city to Panhala and elsewhere. Kumar’s wife Neema (Tejaswini Pandit) is left clueless as she is unable to understand her husband’s frequent out-of-town travels and begins to despair as he follows his quest.

Swwapnil essays the role of a harried Kumar impeccably. His hysteria, dread and excitement get heightened when he meets the older Chakrapani. In the last episode, we see Swwapnil grabbing his wife into an intense smooch that probably celebrates the no-censorship freedom on the OTT platform and maybe an indication of what might be missing in his life. Samantar has quite a few expletives and no intrusive songs making it an enjoyable watch.

The identity of the actor who plays Sudarshan Chakrapni must remain concealed for the purposes of the review but eagle-eyed audience members have already recognized him from the trailer of the series as well as several media news. All we would like to say is that he is an actor who owned the character he played in one of India’s most landmark serials ever made before Swwapnil came along to take up the mantle from him.