For the protagonist and narrator of Taskaree: The Smuggler's Web, rectitude is heroism. There are other traits, too, that define the Customs officer - courage under fire, bravado in the face of danger, and quick thinking in the midst of systemic sloth.
Customs superintendent Arjun Meena (Emraan Hashmi) possesses all the above qualities in abundance, in addition to his ability to lead by example.
But nothing is more important to him and his handpicked colleagues than probity. So much so that one team member disowns his family and fiancée because of their failure to understand his principles.
Arjun, suspended for a reason that is never revealed, is reinstated and put in charge of a crack team ("of honest, diligent, and incorruptible officers"). His brief is to put an end to the smuggling of contraband goods - drugs, gold, and luxury watches - at the Mumbai International Airport.
The honesty that they swear by is repeatedly tested by a smuggling syndicate run by Milan-based Ranjeet, alias Bada Choudhary (Sharad Kelkar), and his accomplices in Al Dera (a fictional nation for which Bahrain is the stand-in location) and Ethiopia.
A few in Arjun's team, and outside it, succumb to the temptation of making a fast buck, but others hold out until the bitter end. The climax - it is a culmination of what is more a battle of wits than a show of clout and derring-do - isn't marked by explosive action.
It plays out outside two airport warehouses and on the rooftop of a high-rise building in a foreign land from where part of the smuggling network operates. One man is slapped. Nobody is shot. That is not to say that no blood is spilled in Taskaree.
The Netflix show created by Neeraj Pandey is a slow burn that lacks sustained crackle. It probes the workings of the Customs at one of the world's busiest airports, but the hustle-bustle that it seeks to whip up is often disappointingly inert.
The Customs personnel go into overdrive when international flights land and the passengers and their bags head to the terminal exit. But the show, barring a few moments of intrigue and tension, struggles to maintain momentum.
The seven-episode series is bogged down at times by the nitty-gritty of the functioning of the Customs department - brainstorming, intelligence-gathering, interceptions, interrogations, and inquests as the Customs pursue every case to its conclusion. The payoffs are inconsistent.
Written by Vipul K. Rawal and Neeraj Pandey (who also is the director of two of the episodes, leaving the remaining five to Raghav M. Jairath and B.A. Fida), the show is also a tad undermined by erratic and contrived character arcs.
A couple of the key figures in the plot - one on each side of the divide, a criminal mastermind's right-hand man (played by Jameel Khan) and an unwaveringly upright Customs officer (Nandish Sandhu) - are saddled with facile backstories that strain credulity.
The two men end up paying a price for the choices they make, but they carry on regardless because if they don't, the plot would be left with loose ends, if not gaping holes.
Most of the others, including Bada Choudhary, get no more than quick voiceover introductions. The idea is to help the viewer grasp why the characters are the way they are. It does not quite work.
The background information is barely sufficient in most cases, although, as narrator, Arjun trots out plenty of exposition about the work he and his ilk do and about the provisions and scope of the enforcement network they are a part of.
Some of the info is helpful, no doubt, but some only slows down the show. The audience is told and shown a bit about single mother Mitali Kamath (Amruta Khanvilkar), the best-informed member of Arjun Meena's team, but that fount of useful knowledge is not pressed enough into service of the plot.
Probably to make amends, Mitali is thrown into the middle of an all-out action sequence to allow her to demonstrate a different facet of her personality. The hero, who is, of course, her immediate superior in the department, looks on unperturbed until his intervention becomes inevitable.
There is indeed a lot of talk, and even empty bluster, in Taskaree, but the show does have its complement of action sequences and spurts of shocking violence (in one, a head is smashed with a golf club; in another, a head is bloodied against a Customs detention room wall). None of them directly involves Arjun.
The protagonist is a far cry from the trigger-happy supercops, pugnacious secret agents, and intrepid elite commandos that Mumbai thrillers are usually propelled by. He is a supremely motivated man but not one to burst a vein when provoked.
He taps his growing bond with air hostess Priya Khubchandani (Zoya Afroz), as well as her personal troubles, to pull her into the orbit of the Customs operations. She risks life and limb for him. He asks her more than once: Were/are you scared? "No," she replies, "because you have my back."
It really helps that Emraan Hashmi plays Arjun Meena. He makes the character unfailingly relatable by tapping into his steely ordinariness. The actor etches out a man of quiet strength who does not need to exude machismo to get the job done.
Neither is the principal antagonist given to acts of violence except once early in the tale (he repeats the act later to drive home his ruthless streak). But no matter what he does and says, Bada Choudhary (despite Kelkar's big, booming voice) does not evoke menace (or ferocity) of the kind that would have made him an archvillain.
The Customs unit set up under Arjun is the brainchild of a newly appointed Assistant Commissioner, Prakash Kumar (Anurag Sinha). The latter has to browbeat his own boss, who advises caution rather than a crackdown on smugglers, to secure a go-ahead for his cleanup plans.
Taskaree makes do with short bursts of energy as the action moves in and out of cities, passenger planes, airport terminals, and the dens of the smugglers in Milan, the source of luxury goods; Al Dera, from where gold consignments originate; and Addis Ababa, the hub of drugs.
Taskaree takes audiences deep inside a rarely seen domain. For that alone, it deserves to be seen. If only the sheen of novelty wasn't dulled by facile plot twists, it would have been a far more captivating show.
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Emraan Hashmi, Anurag Sinha, Visawadia Bhavesh, Amruta Khanvilkar
