The missing clue
Inspector Rishi
he longformat police procedural is one subgenre that has certainly benefited from the OTT boom, especially in the Tamil streaming space. Prime Video has been putting its best foot forward with titles like
Suzhal: The Vortex and
Vadhandhi: The Fable of Velonie. But the upcoming 10episode series, Inspector Rishi, is no ordinary cop story; in fact, the series takes on one of the least explored hybrid genres to tell its tale: investigative horror.
Inspector Rishi tells the story of a group of policemen investigating murders that are said to be the work of a
vanaratchi (a forest spirit). If that is the case, why is the series titled after the cop leading the investigation and not something like…Vanaratchi? “When I started writing the story in 2010, Rishi’s character is what popped up first. Naturally, he became the centrepoint of the story.” says series creator Nandhini JS.
TNaveen Chandra
Actor Naveen Chandra describes his character, Rishi, as a calm and composed officer. “Rishi is someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts and until he cracks the case, he won’t compromise on anything. He’s calm even in a tense situation. He wouldn’t show that so expressively,” says Naveen.
It does seem from the success of cop titles on streaming platforms that the long format is helping creators dig deeper and explore characters further. On the short format, it surely seems like the mass masala cop has taken a back seat, with audiences liking better the offbeat cops like the ones Naveen played in Ammu or Jigarthanda Double ◣. Naveen credits the directors for writing such characters that are close to reality. “All these characters wear khaki, but each character has its own good and bad traits. For Ammu, somewhere it became like a reference from real life because I have seen people do that. Jigarthanda was complete madness. Inspector Rishi is a very layered, intellectual character and I feel so proud to have gotten the opportunity to play this character,” says Naveen.
Sunaina
In Inspector Rishi, Sunaina plays a forest guard named Kathy. “Playing a forest guard was quite a new experience,” she says. Having observed the Tamil industry for over 15 years as an actor, and having ventured into OTT even before the pandemicinduced boom (in Nandhini’s Nila Nila Odi Vaa in 2018), Sunaina has seen how the writing of female characters has evolved over the years on the big and small screen. “A change is certainly happening, and I am also seeing more audiences demanding such a change.
The audiences are telling the writers and directors that such and such actors deserve betterwritten characters.”
Inspector Ravi is streaming on Prime Video
Naveen Chandra and Sunaina in stills from