Sagar Tetali
Naga Chaitanya plays Sagar Varma, an acclaimed journalist on his way to becoming chief editor of a new newspaper called Samachar in Vizag, when he comes across mysterious newspaper clippings that foretell the deaths of his acquaintances and his family.
It doesn’t know whether it’s going for David Fincher or Rob Zombie, and it is too timid and scattered to alchemize the two and grow a voice of its own.
It features a morally grey protagonist, an exploration of the ethical conundrums of journalism, a female detective who frequently upends the men in the show with her clever deductions, - all rarities in Telugu cinema.
The determined lead investigator, and she’s given a few great scenes of Sherlockian deduction—but the show’s convoluted writing prevents her from impacting the events of the plot, and this is a symptom of a deeper problem.
The violence begins to seem excessive, particularly against women—a pregnant woman is assaulted twice by the same man, once in a fake-out dream sequence, and later, for real.
I hope that shows to come will build on what Dhootha does right—its structure and its attempts at genre storytelling. As for the show at hand, it frustrates not with incompetence, but with mediocrity.