Akka, a new Indian thriller on Netflix, takes place in a fictional city that’s been ruled by women for centuries. The latest threat to that leadership and powers is one of the most ruthless people they’ve ever encountered. And the most interesting part is that a woman is threatening their power for the first time.
AKKA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: An animated sequence that explains how women came to rule the city of Pernuru, and how they were still able to keep control of the region even when the Indian government consolidated power in the 1940s.
The Gist: The rulers of each of the three regions in Pernuru is called “Akka,” and Bhavani (Keerthy Suresh) is the most powerful and ruthless of the three. We flash to 1985, and see that she has no problem murdering a male businessman who puts in a competing bid for a liquor license. This is right before the coronation of her young cousin Kaveri (Saisha Salvi) as the Akka of one of the other house of Pernuru.
In the meantime, in the city formerly known as Bombay, a self-made killer named Rudra (Radhika Apte) manages to convince an exiled male gang leader to let her go to Pernuru and fight for the territory that’s rightfully his. The goal is to funnel weapons and drug smuggling activity through Pernuru, and Rudra eventually wants to take over from the Akkas and rule the region herself. The way she figures, the Akkas have never fought a woman before, much less a woman who started from nothing and knows how to fight for what she wants.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Akka feels like an Indian version of a gangster show like The Westies.
Our Take: Like in a typical gangster show, Akka has a lot of characters, and a lot of competing factors whose interests aren’t completely explained. That’s what we saw in the first episode. The only Akka we really know anything about is Bhavani, and we know that she’s pretty ruthless when people get in the way of what she wants or threatens the power of any of the rulers in the city. We know that Rudra is ambitious and tenacious, and spits at the idea that Akkas like Bhavani came to their wealth and power via family succession and didn’t earn it like she did.
That being said, everyone around Bhavani and Rudra are more or less interchangeable. But there is potential for this show to ratchet up the tension as the Rudra manages to chip away at the Akkas’ power, and an ultimate confrontation between Rudra and Bhavani takes place. We just wish, however, that we had a bit more of an idea of exactly what’s at stake before the show got into its violent cat-and-mouse game (and boy, it gets pretty violent by the end of the episode).
Performance Worth Watching: We loved how cold and ruthless Radhika Apte is as Rudra. Despite the fact that she’s the objectively “more evil” of the two main characters, we actually liked watching her get under Bhavani’s skin.
Sex And Skin: There’s talk of whether Rudra’s male counterpart likes to be on top or the bottom, but that’s about it.
Parting Shot: A burned body left on the beach shows the Akkas that Rudra means business.
Our Call: SKIP IT. Given the plethora of faceless characters swarming around and the truly dark turn the first episode takes, there’s just too much going on in Akka to hold our interest for the entire season.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
