Still from 'Poacher'.
Credit: Special Arrangement
It is hard to watch an elephant die. Even if it is only on the small screen. Its gentle eyes closed in pain, blood trickling from the single bullet wound in the centre of its forehead, and then, the ungainly collapse of a magnificent beast. ‘Poacher’ begins with the killing of an elephant. As the tale unspools and the deaths pile on, we see at the beginning of every episode, the carcass of the very same animal, killed without remorse for its ivory, rotting, disintegrating and finally becoming a skeleton — a mute witness to human greed.
Writer-director Richie Mehta’s new eight-part series follows the ethos and format of his acclaimed Delhi Crime (Netflix) but is much more unflinching in its narration. The series is based on real-life events in 1995 a few years after hunting was made illegal in India when the Kerala forest department uncovered one of the biggest elephant poaching rackets in the country with links to international crime syndicates. A procedural certainly but one with more heart than usual, this is the story of a bunch of dedicated forest officers who give their all to hunt down the criminals and save the elephants.
But the series is not without its faults. There are one too many characters and it gets quite confusing. Editing is patchy and some episodes tend to drag. The intense desire to be authentic is appreciated but this reduces the ‘dread factor’ and unholy anticipation that lifts a procedural from its mundanity.
Full marks to the cast for the way they have immersed themselves in the story; no one feels out of place. And despite the animals and birds being computer-generated (and not very state-of-the-art), it is a nice touch every now and then to see the world from their viewpoint.