The stars of CA Topper, in descending order, are Shubhrajyoti Barat, Ashok Pathak and Faisal Malik
Members of the esteemed Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) are mighty miffed with Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper. They don’t like that a CA, that too a topper, has been made to zip around Noida on his yellow scooter to service women who can pay Rs 11,000+ for an orgasm or two. They would rather have the CA topper pouring over unwieldy Excel sheets, crunching numbers, and doing tippy-tippy-tap on a calculator.
So, just before the show’s release, they went running to Delhi High Court, calling the show vulgar and urging the court to stop the series. The judge said, nothing doing, go home.
Silly guys.
All the country’s CAs should have instead formed a human chain from Mumbai's Siddhivinayak to Delhi's very tall Shiv Murti and poured buckets of milk on both the gods as thanks that someone finally had an interesting idea around the deathly letters CA.
Having binge-watched ‘CA Topper’, I can say that all the ooh-aah and sex business that our esteemed CAs were objecting to is very much part of the nine-episode show. In fact, ‘CA Topper’ goes where very few desi shows have gone before—it treats paying female clients to horizontal, and sometimes vertical, delights. All these scenes are sexy, some are decidedly steamy but are tastefully done.
‘CA Topper’ deserves kudos for bringing sex for the pleasure of women centre stage, but it is not a great show.
Yet, it is fun to watch because, apart from the naughty bits, it has good actors playing interesting characters. But its screenplay, by Puneet Krishna, adds so many characters and their individual shticks and tangential stories to the show that after a while the show is like a headless chicken running in one direction in one episode, and another in the next.
It’s not that we can’t follow what’s happening. You can. But it all feels pointless.
When it begins, ‘CA Topper’ is about Tribhuvan Mishra (Manav Kaul), an honest, middle-class man who is a great husband, an honest officer, and daddy to two school-going kids. As an officer in the Noida Town Planning Department, where he is constantly under pressure to accept bribes and pass projects, he is uncompromising despite being perpetually short on cash.
His wife Ashoklata (Naina Sareen) wilts every time her brother Shambhu (Sumit Gulati) and sister-in-law Shobha (Shweta Basu Prasad) taunt Tribhuvan. But in the bedroom, Tribhuvan is an untiring superstar who keeps on giving. So Ashoklata ignores the taunts, and enjoys marital bliss.
Also in Noida lives bhujia king Teeka Ram Jain (Shubhrajyoti Barat), with his wife, Bindi Jain (Tillotama Shome). Teeka Ram, who is a halwai by day and contract killing on the side, wants a no-fuss biwi. But Bindi wants filmy romance, song and dance, dramatic declarations of undying love. When she asks, he humiliates her and seems to care more for the two guys who work for him — Dhaincha (Ashok Pathak) and Lappu (Amarjeet Singh) — than he does for Bindi. There isn't a moment of joy or bliss here.
A sudden bank scam freezes Tribhuvan’s life and he decides that the only way to make some money is to offer his sexy services to ladies who can pay.
When his raunchy romp in dimly-lit hotel rooms begins, and we are treated to women throwing their heads back and twisting bedsheets, ‘CA Topper’ looks like an Alt Balaji type of sex fest.
But the show deals with all this like an adult, putting its feminist foot forward and treating women’s one-hour of screaming-sweaty business like a routine, short trip to a parlour en route to mundane chores. That’s very cool and CA Topper gets one extra star just for that.
Word spreads, and Tribhuvan's clients increase, but simultaneously the stink from Teeka Ram’s deadly deeds begins to rise. Enter two cops— Haider Ali (Faisal Malik), the chubby one who exercises, and Mathew Varghese (Sunil Saraswat), the thin one who eats a lot.
Another murder and the show goes totally bonkers.
One minute we are with Mando Bua (Yamini Das), Tribhuvan's wife's relative who keeps irritating him, the next minute we are with Shambhu and Shobha who have their own side show going on with sundry goons and guns.
Next episode we are with Teeka Ram and Bindi, or Teeka Ram and his new recruit. Or Tribhuvan and his sex guru.
Then there’s Builder 1 and Builder 2. There’s also a slimy boss in Tribhuvan's office, a congenial colleague, Goonda Gang 1 and a Solitary Goonda. And let's not forget a neighbour who becomes Mando Bua’s lover, a paan-wala, a guard and two killers in a car.
In between all this is a very, very orange cake that Ashoklata keeps baking. It looked terrible and reminded me of those cakes we grew up with—sitting in glass cases in local confectionery shops with two dead flies lying next to them. But in ‘CA Topper’, everyone keeps eating this cake and raving about it. It also holds the key to some mysteries and lives.
If you have read your Amar Chitra Kathas, you’ll see the similarities between ‘CA Topper’ and the story of ‘Daku Anguli Maar’, at least in the moral lesson they both seek to deliver: No good comes from bad deeds.
Despite such distinguished inspiration, the show's plot is very weak.
It has some funny scenes—especially the banter about Salman-Shah Rukh—and characters are entrusted to good actors, but a lot of time is wasted on things that eventually don’t amount to anything, like the bully at the kids’ school, stray puppies, RWAs, a colleague at Tribhuvan’s office who seems to be a person of interest. There are also long sequences that defy common sense, including one involving yellow scooters.
If ‘CA Topper’ had been edited down to six episodes from nine, there would have been a little less redundant stuff.
The show is carried valiantly by its actors and their performances. Manav Kaul is excellent when he has to talk. When he has to act without talking, he hams. But since he is easy on the eye, his shortcomings are easy to ignore. Tilottama Shome, who keeps skulking around with a pout, is a bit of a drag. But Shweta Basu Prasad is a live wire and I wish her role had been written with a little more depth.
However, the real stars of ‘CA Topper’, in descending order, are Shubhrajyoti Barat who plays Teeka Ram, Ashok Pathak who plays Dhaincha and Faisal Malik of Panchayat fame who plays the fat cop.
Without them, this CA would have failed miserably.
Show: Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper
Cast: Manav Kaul, Shubhrajyoti Barat, Tillotama Shome, Ashok Pathak, Shweta Basu Prasad, Sumit Gulati, Faisal Malik, Shrikant Verma, Jatin Gulati
Direction: Amrit Raj Gupta, Puneet Krishna
Rating: 3/5
Streaming on Netflix
