The Bitter Pill Of Reality

Sometimes, the review of a web series that deals with an explosive story rooted in reality needs to be placed against the backdrop of some real issues ailing the industry involved to understand the subject being dealt with and the outcome that ought to have happened in real life. Since this does not happen for obvious reasons, the makers make it happen through an OTT series on Jio Cinema like Pill.

This eight-episode series Pill set in Delhi and Punjab exposes corruption in the pharmaceutical industry in India. The problem with internal corruption in the pharmaceutical industry lies in the bitter fact that it deals with human lives who are the direct consumers of medicines, injections, pills manufactured by the industry, instruments used in surgery. This includes patients, infants, children, pregnant mothers and senior citizens.

Pill also marks the OTT debut of Ritiesh Deshmukh as Prakash Chauhan, in a role he has never been seen before. He is a qualified doctor who works in the Medicine Authority of India and is in charge of qualitative control and accuracy in the manufacture of drugs before it is cleared for manufacture by the concerned producers whose sole aim is to make profit and the real cost be damned.

Pill is directed by Rajkumar Gupta and produced by Ronnie Screwalla’s production house RSVP. Gupta has already established himself with thriller-exposes like Aamir, No One Killed Jessica and Raid so his digging into the underbelly of the pharmaceutical industry is the natural outcome of his choice of subject. For an OTT series, Rajkumar Gupta treats the subject differently. The series begins on a low key and then takes on speed, tension and suspense with Prakash Chauhan alongwith his three-member team of Gursimrat Kaur (Anshul Chauhan) and the investigative journalist Noor (Akshat Chauhan) who begin to dig the reasons why some ordinary men and women are suddenly blinded and then six die after being given a particular medicine produced by the giant pharmaceutical company Forever Care, headed and owned by an arrogant, short-tempered but cold-blooded human calculator Brahma Gill (Pavan Malhotra) and his arrogant son Ekam (Nikhil Khurana) who is engaged to be married to the Chief Minister’s daughter.

The CM is hand-in-glove with Gill and allows him to do what he will with his pharmaceutical industry and the human cost be damned. The ambitious Gill is working for a merger with a German firm followed by a clearance from the US drug administration to clear a cancer drug which is yet to go through the trials at the laboratory to finally get the green signal for marketing.

Gill and Evam are so merciless, corrupt and money-minded that they quite coolly muddle with data and fabricate results seen in the pilot study comprised of poor, illiterate and ignorant people who are not even informed that they are part of a pilot study on dangerous drugs. When Chauhan and his team schedule a sudden inspection, a file is disposed of in a hurry but a vigilant, honest and upright microbiologist working with Forever Care refuses to give up even when he knows that his life could be at stake.

The glimpses of Chauhan’s family life are few and far between but it offers insights into his commitment to his job of unearthing the evil practices in Forever Care. Neha Saraf as Chauhan’s wife who seeks vertical mobility in her social circle but is stumped every time by the simple and straightforward Chauhan is a delight to watch.

Her name is Babita but she asks her husband to address her as “Babe” in public! Disgusted with a husband whose honesty and sincerity of purpose make their financial standing precarious, she offers solid support to her husband when he is stripped of everything including his job. She is very good and offers relief from the slim and sophisticated, chiffon-draped screen wives we are forever audience to.

Ritiesh Deshmukh gets the rare opportunity to explore his versatility as an actor. He is not only stripped of humor which he is good at, but is also vested with the responsibility of playing a low-key person who feels shy all the time, is scrupulously honest and is fond of the things he already owns. So, the touching scene between him and senior Dr. Basudev (Baharul Islam) when the latter offers him the precious bribe of an imported car and Chauhan throws him out is beautiful in its underplaying which makes it a strong, intense comment on honesty versus corruption. Another sweet scene is when his wife asks him to sing and he straightaway says that he feels shy. He tries to remain in the background but is forced to take the front seat in the court scenes that lead to an electrifying climax.

The other actors are real pillars of support adding a lot of steam to Ritiesh’s determination to uncover the corruption in Forever Care not to forget the marvelous performance of Kunj Anand as the microbiologist who goes into deep depression when trapped by his employers for catching the fly in the soup. He has been given a wonderful opportunity to explore his versatility as an actor and lives up to it.

What damages the series is the loud hamming by Pawan Malhotra as Gill. But one wonders that he was made to ham to make his character stand in sharp contrast to the subtlety of Chauhan. Also superficial is the addition of the CM’s daughter’s character who does not quite belong to the script or the film. Gurpreet is wonderful and spontaneous minus any make-up or glamour. Though this is not really a character-driven story and more an issue-driven story, the characters are well fleshed out and enacted with conviction.

The cinematography sticks to blues and greys and avoids bright primary colours right through the film which jells into the serious mood of the film and sustains the subtlety. The editing is very good as it chops and changes from the poor colony to the hidden lab where medicine labels are changed clandestinely, where the poor are dying for taking part in illegal drug trials, cutting to the labs and the inner offices back to the residence of Chauhan. The music and soundtrack are so low-key that they are almost audibly ‘invisible’ and merge into the visuals without making noise.

Writers Parveez Shaikh and Jaideep Yadav need a pat on their backs for delivering a finely honed script. Pill tries to drive home a bitter pill that is not so bitter when the series comes to an end with truth winning over corruption at the cost of innocent human lives.

Postscript: The seven pharmaceutical companies listed for making heavy purchases of electoral bonds are - Hetero Labs and Hetero Healthcare, Torrent Pharma, Zydus Healthcare, Glenmark, Cipla, PCA Laboratories Limited, and Intas Pharmaceutical.

According to a report in the New Indian Express dated 28th March 2023, The Centre cancelled licenses of 18 pharma companies for manufacturing spurious and adulterated medicines in India, officials said. The move came after multiple allegations were made by importers of Indian medicines, including Uzbekistan, Gambia and the US.