if Jaanbaaz Hindustan Ke differs from other shows in the crowded genre because the two main characters are women, observes Deepa Gahlot.

Had Srijit Mukherjis Jaanbaaz Hindustan Ke come a little earlier it might have aroused more interest.

But after quite a slew of cops and terror shows and movies, there’s viewer fatigue when it comes to this topic.

Some of the locally produced shows (like The Family Guy, Special Ops) jostle with smooth international series (Homeland, Fauda) on OTT, with bigger budgets and better resources.

Jaanbaaz Hindustan Ke However, sincerity and ambition cannot be faulted as hardworking cops put their lives on hold to hunt textbook jihad Terrorists from the Northeast to Kerala.

Kavya Iyer (Regina Cassandra) is based in Meghalaya, which is strange as she is not from the region and does not speak the language.

Estranged from her husband Sameer (Barun Sobti), she lives with her mother (Deepika Deshpande Amin) and cheeky young son Reyansh (Jihan Hodar).

While chasing militants through the beautiful misty landscape, she is ambushed and brought out in disgrace when several members of her team are killed. No one pays attention to their claim that RDX was smuggled across the Bangladesh border.

While she struggles with career problems, her husband threatens divorce and demands custody of their son.

When another group of terrorists assassinates the Prime Minister of Assam in a drone strike, possibly with the smuggled explosives, she is assigned to the National Investigation Agency led by Mahira Rizvi (Mita Vashisht). Her new boss is initially hostile, but once she accepts that Kavya works her own way and gets results, she warms to her.

They follow the terrorists’ trail to Jaipur, where another drone attack is taking place on a number of MLAs, and Kavya suspects there will be more.

The terrorist duo consists of Tariq (Sumeet Vyas) and Thasleena (Gayathrie Shankar), both radicalized by an unseen “uncle” and trained by ISIS in Syria, along with other misguided Muslim youth.

The show is a serious, but mostly boring, police procedural that shows in great detail how the cops find leads, hunt down suspects, and protect the country.

The men and women who selflessly do these dangerous jobs aren’t Bond-esque glamor heroes, they’re ordinary-looking people, like internet sleuth Chandan Jha (Panchayat‘s Chandan Roy), the serious, bespectacled guy who speaks chaste Hindi with a Bihari accent.

Kavya is admired by the media, who call her “Shillong”. Ki Scherni;, but also flagellated when things go wrong.

Following the terrorists’ trail, she is shot at, wounded with explosives, and gets into fist fights, but she is relentless.

The series ends in Kochi, where another major attack is planned, and the pace picks up a bit.

It’s mostly a paint-by-numbers thriller in which the terrorist leader gets lots of footage but not much personality.

Vyas gets a scene to bite into as he taunts Kavya and Mahira and asks him elementary questions.

if Jaanbaaz Hindustan Ke (written by Neeraj Udwani and Ashish P Verma) differs from other shows in the crowded genre because the two main characters in power are women; Attacks are carried out by drones (which might give some crazy criminals ideas), and painstaking computer work (no shiny gizmos) plays a big part in tracking down the villains.

Regina Cassandra has an attractive screen presence, but her kavya is mostly one-dimensional.

Mita Vashisht, who is given austere outfits (except for a brief scene where she is seen at home), plays together enough for the entire cast.

The series pays homage to the police officers who lost their lives on duty and ends with the promise of a second season. It could use some speed and energy.

Jaanbaaz Hindustan Ke Stream to ZEE5.

Jaanbaaz Hindustan Ke Review Rediff Rating: