Mrs Deshpande review: Madhuri Dixit Anchors Nagesh Kukunoor’s tense, layered crime thriller

Mrs Deshpande Review: Madhuri Dixit carries a kind of concentrated intensity that feels almost royal, as if certain characters arrive in her body already crowned. Across decades and drastically different worlds, she has proven a rare elasticity of presence, the ability to slip into a role and make it look less like performance and more like revelation.

Whether she was Pallavi Patel in Maja Ma, a closeted housewife standing at the trembling edge of self-acceptance, Bahaar Begum in Kalank, a courtesan draped in grace and quiet wounds, or the quintessentially sanskari Nisha Choudhury in Hum Aapke Hai Koun, Dixit has consistently made the emotional temperature of a scene rise simply by inhabiting it.

And after watching Mrs Deshpande, Nagesh Kukunoor’s Indian adaptation of the French mini-series La Mante, it feels safe to say she has hit it out of the park yet again, in a clever, if imperfect, thriller that peels itself open like survival in Yakutsk: layered upon layered, and the more you strip away, the more you realise you are not just watching, you are sinking.

The premise arrives with the clean chill of a headline. A new string of murders replicates the exact modus operandi of killings committed twenty-five years ago by an imprisoned serial killer. With no room for coincidence, law enforcement relocates the original murderer, Mrs Deshpande, to a safehouse to help catch the emerging copycat.

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Madhuri Dixit plays Mrs Deshpande with a restraint that feels more terrifying than theatrics. She agrees to cooperate, but on one condition: she will work only with Inspector Tejas Phadke, played by Siddharth Chandekar, unaware that she is his mother. The hook is blunt, unsettling, and rich with psychological promise, because it makes the case procedural on the surface but deeply personal at its core.

The first episode wastes no time easing you in. A murder unfolds within minutes, swift and unsettling in its specificity. An actor is strangled with a thin neon green rope, a visual detail that burns itself into memory like a warning sign. The killer places one of the actor’s trophies in his hands, then glues his eyes so they cannot shut, forcing the dead to stare. When senior IPS officer Arun Khatri, played by Priyanshu Chatterjee, arrives, a déjà vu settles over him like fog. He has seen this choreography

before. He investigated these kinds of murders twenty-five years ago. He caught the culprit. It was Mrs Deshpande.

But Mrs Deshpande has been in a Hyderabad prison, living under another identity, Zeenat. From the beginning, Khatri knows this is not her doing. This is imitation, which in crime is its own kind of devotion: a killer borrowing not just technique, but myth. Inside the prison, Mrs Deshpande is shown tending to the kitchen, an almost eerie domestic detail that complicates the image of the monster. Khatri approaches her for help. She agrees. But again, only on her terms.

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Parallelly, the series sketches Tejas Phadke in motion, the kind of cop who lives in the adrenaline of undercover work before being abruptly pulled into a nightmare built from old files and older sins. Khatri calls him in, asking him to drop everything and investigate the copycat. Outside the job, Tejas is shown in softer spaces. He dotes on his wife Tanvi, played by Diksha Juneja, who runs a hair and beauty salon with her friend Divya, played by Nimisha Nair. He is also close to his grandfather Dinanath Phadke, whom he fondly calls Ajoba, a detail that matters because it anchors Tejas in family warmth just as the story begins to corrode his idea of family altogether.

When Tejas reads Mrs Deshpande’s case file, his perception of her is immediately fixed into something blunt and punitive. He approaches her like she is only what the file says she is: a serial killer, full stop. That bias colours the tone in which he speaks to her at the safehouse, and that friction becomes the engine of the show. From that moment onward, Mrs Deshpande begins to do what she does best: peel away certainty.

Was she truly the menacing, ruthless killer Tejas has pictured? Who is the copycat who has been aping her methods? And how will this investigation alter the lives of everyone inside its orbit? The series does not hand you answers quickly. It asks you to keep walking deeper into its corridor of locked doors, for six episodes, and it is lengthy but gripping in the way a long night can be gripping when you cannot sleep because the mind refuses to stop turning.

Nagesh Kukunoor, after City Of Dreams and The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case, once again demonstrates his fluency with OTT-coded storytelling. The series is mounted aptly, and it rarely feels padded. More importantly, the pace pulls you inward like an undertow. It draws you into the labyrinth of the case without relying on cheap noise.

The narrative keeps itself curious and alert, exploring characters whose roles may not seem pivotal at first, but who end up forming essential parts of the larger machinery. Kukunoor also avoids the common trap of overindulging side plots that exist only to prolong runtime. Even when you can sense certain turns coming, the show remains watchable because it keeps the atmosphere taut and the motivations murky enough to sustain doubt.

The twists are spread with some balance, some arriving as surprises, others announcing themselves from a distance. But the series’ cleverness lies in how it keeps you from guessing too easily who matters, and why. The cinematography is top-notch, giving the show an aesthetic clarity that suits its cold procedural spine. The background score assimilates well with the screenplay, never clawing for attention but quietly tightening the mood. The opening theme, composed by Tapas Relia, stands out in particular, a sonic signature that settles into the show like an omen.

One of the show’s most commendable achievements is how it adapts the original into an Indian milieu without feeling like a translated blueprint. Even without having watched the French series, you can sense the confidence of the adaptation, the way the story begins to feel like its own. The narrative absorbs social themes that fit the Indian context, threading in ideas around sexual abuse, trauma, sexuality, sexual identity, motherhood, and other crucial elements without turning the show into a lecture or a public service announcement. These themes are not announced; they are inhabited. They move through the characters’ histories and choices like currents under water, present even when unseen.

That said, the series is not without flaws. While it largely avoids the obvious clichés of the genre, some scenes do slip into familiar crime thriller tropes. These moments are noticeable precisely because the show spends so much time being textured and controlled. Still, even when it stumbles, it remains interesting, and it remains watchable, which is not a small victory in a genre crowded with interchangeable grimness.

At the center of it all is Madhuri Dixit, the heart and soul of Mrs Deshpande. She plays the character with an ease that feels almost unsettling, as though mystery is not something she performs but something she exhales. There is an authenticity in the way she balances concealment and revelation, the way her motives remain partially veiled even when she is speaking. The aura around her character is designed to confuse the viewer’s moral compass. Should you root for her? Should you fear her? The show thrives in that ambiguity, and Dixit knows exactly how to feed it.

Siddharth Chandekar as Tejas is equally compelling. His portrayal captures the gradual shift in a man whose certainties are forced to erode, and whose character arc deepens as the case tightens its grip. Priyanshu Chatterjee, though in a comparatively peripheral role, lends conviction and steadiness as Arun Khatri, the investigator who recognises the pattern and refuses to let it become history repeating itself unchecked.

Diksha Juneja brings a commendable warmth as Tanvi, an important emotional anchor for Tejas, and her chemistry with Chandekar feels natural and lived in. Nimisha Nair as Divya is a pleasant surprise, particularly in how her on-screen persona shifts gears and how convincingly she adapts to those turns. Kavin Dave also impresses, and it is genuinely refreshing to see him essay a more complex character and pivot within the narrative with that complexity intact.

The supporting roster is strong too. Vishwas Kini as Alex, a character you cannot say much about without stepping into spoiler territory, holds intrigue. Sulakshana Joglekar as Pallavi Sonawane adds grounded presence as one of the officers on the case. Pradeep Welankar as Tejas’ Ajoba brings familial texture, the kind that makes the domestic stakes feel real. Across the board, Kukunoor has picked actors who understand craft and control, performers who can hold a scene without announcing that they are holding it.

By the time Mrs Deshpande concludes, it has quietly pulled you into its moral fog. Answers arrive, but certainty does not. The series understands that some stories are meant to unsettle rather than resolve, to leave residue rather than relief. As a crime thriller, it is gripping. As a psychological study, it is quietly haunting. And as a showcase for Madhuri Dixit’s formidable screen presence, it stands as yet another reminder of why she remains in a league of her own.