Stream It or Skip It?

Taskaree: The Smuggler’s Web is a seven-episode series airing on Netflix by way of India, from prolific filmmaker and TV creator Neeraj Pandey. It’s a show about putting a team together… only that team isn’t pulling off an Ocean’s 11-style heist, despite the jazzy score and bright colors. No, they’re a team of customs agents assembled to stop a smuggling ring based in Milan. So, yes, this is a glamorous series set largely at an airport.

Opening Shot: A pair of men, one of them limping, are pursued through side streets by an angry woman. She nails one of them with a melon, but to no avail; they maintain a strong enough lead to make it to some docks, where they speed away in a boat. The woman, stopping to catch her breath, is then surprised to be led away by Arjun Meena (Emran Hashmi). It’s a grabby teaser; before we can learn more about whatever this situation is, Arjun pipes in with narration explaining his customs job at Mumbai Airport. 

The Gist:  Airport customs checks are generally seen by the traveling public as tedious paperwork. What Taskaree pre-supposes is: Maybe it’s an exciting wing of law enforcement? Many of the cop-narrative trademarks are here: A top agent (the aforementioned Arjun Meena), suspended from his job for reasons that will presumably be named later, is brought back into the fold by a new, no-nonsense boss Prakash Kumar (Anurag Sinha), acting with the authority to assemble a team to stem the tide of smuggling that comes through the Mumbai airport, specifically stopping a ring based in Milan.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Some viewers may think of heist shows like Leverage or movies like Ocean’s 11, even though this show is about stopping smuggling, not getting away with a caper.

Our Take: There are so many law-enforcement-themed shows that follow cops, detectives, federal agents, and lawyers. If nothing else, Taskaree: The Smuggler’s Web finds a novel approach to that broad genre by instead taking a closer look at customs agents. One of its best bits comes early on, as it sets up a series of different smuggling attempts and maps out how these various characters are all headed toward the Mumbai Airport, where the action is based. There’s a procedural zing to both the filmmaking and the subject; though customs enforcement sounds a little dry, it’s something a lot of people have caught glimpses of without fully understanding, and the show gives it a brightly colored, seemingly fast-paced spin.

I say “seemingly” because over the course of its first 45 minutes, the show doesn’t actually put all of its ducks in a row; it’s one thing for the main characters’ histories to not be fully explicated upfront, the way they might in a feature film. It’s quite another for a bunch of the characters to be held back entirely. By the time we realize that Prakash has a list of multiple high-quality agents he wants to bring back into the customs fold on his watch, he’s only had time to cross one of them off of his list, with more presumably to follow in later installments. It’s the kind of thing a well-paced movie would get done in the first half-hour; here, we’re 45 minutes into a series and still not entirely certain what the main plot or characters are going to be. You might star to wonder if all of the show’s slick forward motion is actually moving us anywhere.

Still, a bustling Mumbai airport (and the various locations feeding into it) has a lot of story potential, and the premise is interesting enough to hold a viewer’s attention for the first episode, even if the show repeatedly makes its procedures more obtuse, rather than shining a light on how these agents actually operate.

Performance Worth Watching: Sinha is weirdly fun despite (or maybe because of) his ramrod-straight officiousness.

Sex And Skin: None! Though there are allusions to strip-searching, that’s not very sexy, is it? In any event, no sex or skin in the first episode.

Parting Shot: “I got my job back — but at that time I had no idea what lay ahead,” Arjun narrates, over a shot of a figure in some kind of luxurious building, with his back to the camera. It’s half intriguing, half baffling.

Sleeper Star: Based on the trailer and other materials, it feels like the true scene-stealers may not have emerged yet; this brisk first installment is mostly just about Arjun and Prakash.

Most Pilot-y Line: If anything, this pilot could use a little more pilot-y exposition just to get us situated in this world!

Our Call: For the first episode, at least, Taskaree has plenty of intrigue, though it’s unclear whether that will be able to sustain over six additional episodes — or if a show that doesn’t even introduce its full ensemble in its pilot will start to feel like waiting in a particularly long airport line. For now, though, STREAM IT for a sample.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.