Brown Review: A Murder Mystery That Forgets To Be Mysterious

ZEE5’s Brown, released on Friday, June 5, 2026, arrives with all the ingredients of a compelling crime thriller.

It has a troubled cop battling personal demons, a high-profile murder in Kolkata, an ensemble cast led by Karisma Kapoor, and source material adapted from Abheek Barua’s novel City Of Death.

On paper, it sounds like the kind of dark psychological thriller that should keep viewers invested from beginning to end. Unfortunately, the series never quite lives up to its promise.

Directed by Abhinay Deo and adapted for the screen by Diggi Sisodia, Sunayana Kumari and Mayukh Ghosh, Brown follows Rita Brown, a Kolkata police officer struggling with alcoholism, grief and emotional trauma while investigating a murder that gradually exposes uncomfortable truths about several people connected to the case.

The biggest problem with this “wannabe” crime thriller is its writing.

A murder mystery lives and dies by suspense. The audience should constantly question motives, doubt suspects, and revise theories.

Here, the show gives away too much too early. Anyone paying close attention can make a fairly accurate guess about the killer’s identity in the second episode. Once that happens, the remaining episodes become an exercise in waiting for the characters to catch up with what viewers have already figured out.

The show lacks the element of surprise of an intelligent crime thriller.

The series stretches its source material far beyond what the story can comfortably sustain. The narrative takes nearly seven episodes to tell what could have been a tightly written four-episode thriller.

Scenes linger longer than necessary. Conversations repeat information that has already been established. Several emotional beats are revisited so often that they lose their impact.

The show also wants to be a psychological drama, but it never explores its themes with enough depth.

Rita Brown is haunted by the memory of her deceased husband, who repeatedly appears in dream sequences and hallucinations.

However, the audience never gets enough insight into that relationship to understand why these moments should matter. As a result, the emotional conflict feels more stated than explored.

Karisma Kapoor, making her comeback after years away from the screen with her OTT debut in Brown, seems committed to the role, but she never reaches that point.

Though she abandons glamour and plays Rita as a broken and exhausted woman carrying years of emotional baggage, her performance often feels trapped within limitations, and the one-note manner in which the character is written makes things even worse for her.

Rita spends most of the series drinking, smoking, brooding, shouting at her mother or looking emotionally drained. The problem is that the character remains largely unchanged throughout the eight episodes, making her journey feel static rather than compelling.

At times, it even feels as though the makers wanted Rita Brown to borrow shades of Prabir Roy Chowdhury from Baishe Srabon, but neither the writing nor the performance comes close to matching the complexity that made Prabir Roy Chowdhury so compelling.

The supporting cast fares no better.

Jisshu Sengupta, usually one of the most dependable actors around, feels strangely disconnected from the material. His psychiatrist character appears important, but the writing never gives him enough substance. Why he chose the role is best known to him. Towards the end, he seems more interested in mimicking Bob Biswas from Kahaani than in creating a distinct character of his own.”

Soni Razdan, as Rita’s mother, and Helen, as her aunt, are reduced to functional supporting roles. They are present, they deliver their lines, and then they disappear. Very little about their characters remains in memory after the series ends.

Surya Sharma, Ajinkya Deo, Paresh Pahuja and the rest of the cast do what they can, but most of the performances feel weighed down by dialogue that rarely sounds natural. Instead of living inside their characters, many actors appear to be performing scenes because the script requires them to.

One of the most irritating aspects of the series is its desperate attempt to appear sophisticated. Characters frequently switch between Hindi and Bengali in ways that feel more performative than organic.

There is nothing wrong with multilingual storytelling when it emerges naturally from the setting. But here, the language shifts often feel like a stylistic device designed to signal intelligence and authenticity rather than serving the story itself.

The visual treatment follows a similar pattern.

The show is drenched in dark tones, muted colours and a constant haze. Every frame seems determined to remind viewers that they are watching a serious neo-noir thriller. After a while, the visual monotony becomes exhausting and adds very little to the storytelling.

To be fair, Abhinay Deo’s direction constantly tries to elevate material that isn’t strong enough to begin with.

What ultimately hurts Brown is that it mistakes mood for substance. It believes that trauma, cigarettes, alcohol, dim lighting, slow conversations and philosophical undertones automatically create depth. They don’t.

Depth comes from characters, storytelling and emotional truth. Those are the areas where the series struggles most.

By the time the final episode arrives, the mystery has long ceased to be interesting, the emotional arcs remain underdeveloped, and the supposedly shocking revelations land with little impact.

Brown is, at best, a one-time watch. Beneath its stylish exterior lies a routine and predictable crime drama stretched far beyond its natural length. Despite a capable cast and an intriguing premise, the show never becomes as intelligent or as compelling as it wants to be.

Rating: 1/5

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