OK Computer Review: Anand Gandhi’s Bizarre Hotstar Series Is Like Pav Bhaji
OK Pc — the brand new Hotstar Specials collection — desires to be numerous issues. At its core, it is designed as a sci-fi comedy. Whereas it is tonally impressed by Douglas Adams’ seminal 1979 novel The Hitchhiker’s Information to the Galaxy, its filmmaking fashion takes after modern-day mockumentaries corresponding to The Workplace and Trendy Household. However then, OK Pc is wrapped in a whodunit thriller thriller plot, which seemingly attracts from the works of Isaac Asimov and HBO’s Westworld collection. Ship of Theseus director Anand Gandhi, a author on OK Pc, has acknowledged the Adams and Asimov inspirations. He mentioned that they — together with creators, administrators, and fellow writers Pooja Shetty and Neil Pagedar — would continuously ask: “What would Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati, or Govinda do? That is the mindset of the collection […] wacky and zany.”
Sadly, OK Pc fails to emulate the perfect qualities of these inspirations. Within the identify of being comedic, the OK Pc writers drive quirkiness and idiosyncrasy all over the place. Each character is eccentric, has odd mannerisms, and says probably the most random of issues. OK Pc is bonkers and in every single place at instances. As for the narrative, exposition is stuffed in each nook. It does attempt to be inventive at instances, by making use of animated interludes or being self-aware about its monologues. However these are uncommon respites. So as to add to the expository mess, the OK Pc script is riddled with logical gaps and different points. There’s little character improvement because the six episodes — I’ve seen all of them — are overtly plot-driven, however even that’s messy. It is senseless how issues occur, and why they go in a sure course.
OK Pc additionally sometimes obtained on my nerves. It is a dialogue-heavy present, to the purpose it appears like OK Pc is competing with the Tina Fey comedy 30 Rock. That isn’t an issue in itself. The difficulty is that one of many major characters is a sentient AI robotic referred to as Ajeeb (voiced by Pagedar, and performed by Ullas Mohan), whose voice is very grating on the ears. I often wished to punch Ajeeb by means of the display so it will cease speaking. At one level, OK Pc inserted a high-pitched tone as a result of it was one thing the characters needed to endure as effectively. I muted the present. Who thought this was a good suggestion? These decisions are deliberate little doubt, however you are not going to attain extra viewers if they cannot stand to even hearken to your present.
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Set in close to future 2031, OK Pc opens in Goa and dives into its plot straightaway: a self-driving automobile has killed a pedestrian. The person’s face has been mangled so badly that it is unidentifiable — OK Pc turns that right into a joke, with each character referring to the sufferer all through as “Pav Bhaji” — and there isn’t any match for his DNA too in any database. Enter Goa’s cyber cell ACP Saajan Kundu (Vijay Varma), a self-described lone wolf closely depending on others, who deems it a homicide. However Laxmi Suri (Radhika Apte), the CEO-founder of a non-profit that advocates for moral therapy of robots, objects — declaring that an AI may by no means kill a human because it goes towards Asimov’s three legal guidelines of robotics. There’s historical past between Saajan and Laxmi, who appear to have break up due to their differing values on the involvement of robots in human society.
Saajan’s investigation quickly leads him to Ajeeb, a one-of-a-kind robotic that kickstarted India’s AI revolution. When you let OK Pc inform it (which it does through a half-episode of exposition), Ajeeb was obtained so effectively when it was created years in the past that it was dubbed a messiah. It primarily solved all of India’s issues, together with non secular concord — or quite, the dearth of it. That is probably the best (unintentional) joke OK Pc is able to. Extra so given how Ajeeb is offered as naïve and terrified. However Ajeeb quickly went in a brand new course that got here as a betrayal to most Indians, who pulled him down from his pedestal and all however discarded him. Forgotten and undesirable, Ajeeb has been lacking for some time earlier than Saajan’s crew runs into him throughout their investigation. Saajan is satisfied that Ajeeb is responsible occasion, however he’ll need to undergo Laxmi.
As a result of that is not sufficient plot and with one eye on a season 2 (that has but to be greenlit), OK Pc additional expands by bringing in Pushpak Shakur (Jackie Shroff), the chief of an “anti-tech, anti-science, anti-vax, and anti-gravity ecoterrorist” group referred to as JJM, Jigyasu Jagrati Manch. (Sidenote, however is not anti-vax and anti-gravity, no matter that even means, primarily anti-science? Pushpak additionally would not imagine in clothes, which leads to Disney+ Hotstar having to censor its personal authentic. That is one side of Indian theatres I’ve undoubtedly not missed on this endless pandemic.) Pushpak confesses that he is behind the demise, although it is instantly clear that he might need ulterior motives. Shakur serves as a mouthpiece for the OK Pc writers’ values and viewpoints, just like the present wanted one other expository system.
Jackie Shroff as Pushpak Shakur in OK Pc
Picture Credit score: Vinayak Kashinth Vetkar/Disney
When it isn’t consumed by narrative calls for, OK Pc makes an attempt to ruminate on the impression of AI robots on human society (like I, Robotic from Asimov) and that we have gone overboard with know-how (like Hitchhiker’s). The world of OK Pc is crammed with robots able to advanced language processing and understanding however they appear to share restricted rights. And just like the Radiohead album it is named after (which in itself was a line from Hitchhiker’s), OK Pc tries to be political. But it surely barely registers, ending up as jabs quite than deep-cut observations.
Weirdly sufficient, OK Pc finally ends up saying probably the most by means of its picture of India. On this close to future, India is the chief of the world from science (India saved the planet from warming, Laxmi is the Greta Thunberg) to soccer (India now beats European giants handily). It is half wishful considering and half pop nationalism. That does not mirror at present’s India in any respect, which makes OK Pc appear to be an alt-history sci-fi collection. However OK Pc remains to be very a lot an extension of at present’s India elsewhere. It is nearly as if OK Pc is saying that we’re sure to finish up who we’re as a individuals, regardless of the technological progress, a shift in grassroots priorities, or movie star teenage activists (if we do not jail them first).
Gandhi additionally used the “India” motive to justify OK Pc’s lo-fi aesthetic — it is paying homage to Hitchhiker’s once more, in order that works — although in my view, it is extra possible a consequence of what the funds allowed. There’s extra proof of that in a portion of OK Pc that’s set inside a VR online game (it is publicly accessible however described as a darkish web online game as if meaning something), given how cartoonish the graphics are. And oh, the VR headsets look precisely just like the Oculus ones, humorous given it is 2031 and India is the projected chief in each division.
Vijay Varma as Saajan Kundu in OK Pc
Picture Credit score: Disney
The Hitchhiker’s Information to the Galaxy is without doubt one of the funniest books I’ve ever learn. And since and regardless of it being over 40 years previous, we have now and haven’t come a great distance. Adams envisioned a world overrun by know-how that was extra annoying than useful. It is why the reply to life, the universe, and all the things, the e book’s supercomputer Deep Thought deduces, is 42. However as our world has develop into overrun by know-how, we have witnessed an entire vary of surprising penalties. OK Pc is born out of that worldview, that know-how has finished extra unhealthy than good. At present’s damaged “digital India”, extrapolated to 2031 with sentient AI robots, is ripe fodder for a sci-fi collection. However OK Pc has not one of the e book’s satirist powers or the mind to think about the latter world.
Its creators have digested a few of the world’s main sci-fi works, however what they’ve produced is actually the collection equal of Deep Thought’s reply. It is Pav Bhaji.
All six episodes of OK Pc at the moment are streaming on Hotstar and Disney+ Hotstar.
