Every once in a while, along comes a show in which we see ourselves, or the world as we live in it, go by. It’s scary, not because it makes us jump off the sofa in between hair-raising horror moments, but because it’s better than any reality show that hit our screen – it’s terrifyingly real. Scoop was just that. Read on to know if this one’s for you. This one’s a spoiler alert, so read at your own risk!
Scoop is a limited series Netflix show inspired by true events. The story maps out the judicial inquiry of crime reporter Jigna Vora’s biographical memoir Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Prison. The main lead – Jagruti Pathak’s character plays out Vora as crime reporter who becomes embroiled in a murder conspiracy of a fellow journalist.
Backstory
Jigna Vora was accused of murdering journalist, Jyotirmoy Dey, in 2011. Dey was a crime and investigations editor for Mid-Day, an Indian tabloid newspaper, and prior to his death, Dey was investigating the black-market oil trade. On June 11, 2011, four men on motorcycles surrounded Dey and shot him multiple times. He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
And that sets the backdrop to the crime mystery real life thriller.
Karishma Tanna essays Jagruti’s character with a story that, interestingly, does not begin with the murder but lays background to the work she does, her professional connections, mode of investigation, grit, determination and ambition, cases she is investigating and most importantly, the professional and personal relationship dynamics that make us so invested in Jagruti’s journey throughout the 6 episode saga. Joining her is fellow journalist, mentor, boss, Imran Siddiqui aka Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub who maintains a steadfast belief in her innocence.
So, you ask, what’s so special about Scoop? It’s just another crime thriller picking off elements from true events to clickbait me into watching a courtroom drama this weekend?
Oh but Scoop is so much more than that.
The court room drama is just an event, like many others, the real fire is in the story, the characters and what it reveals about us and the world we live in. If you are, in any way, connected to the news media, as a consumer of, creator of, or innocent bystander – know that the story is about all of us.
So here we go as we give you 7 reasons to make this your next Netflix watch!
1. Scoop Is About Ambition
Women in a male-dominated world, fighting for a foot in the door – the story has been retold multiple times. But what gives Jagruti’s character the pull is the manner in which she fobs off slights, advances, distractions in an unemotional, matter-of-fact way to get to the bottom of the story she’s chasing. There’s no weeping on the side, feeling sorry for oneself or even gloating at a triumph – it’s all about the work – a beeline for the story and a tooth and nail fight to the finish.
It’s this nuanced performance and subtle depiction of a female crime reporter that is mentally and emotionally free from being trampled upon by male colleague rivalries, business like interaction with police personnel, how not to get riled when the other party just wants that, how to stay focused despite being side-lined that makes her so relatable. Jagruti is not your typical overtly aggressive or emotional female lead embroiled in a man’s world; she is just another crime reporter doing her job every day.
Oh, and if you’re a woman watching Jagruti and working your way up in a man’s world, you see yourself in her and you’re proud to be her in many small, big, smart, subtle, unimaginable yet relatable ways!
Yet, others don’t see her as that. Especially other men.
2. Scoop Is Also About Single & Working Moms
Jagruti is a single mom running a household where her grandparents are also dependent on her. It is so refreshing to see a story where the woman is, in fact, living out the challenges of everyday life and also following her passion – journalism. But it is scary too. Working moms have multiple challenges and then working moms in perilous careers like crime reporting, 24/7 working hours and a committed relationship with their family is a whole new set of challenges.
Jagruti juggling her son’s phone calls, cancelling a movie plan and dropping him off at boarding to keep him safe – the episodes kept reminding us at multiple points that she had a responsibility and despite being an ambitious journalist, a part of her always ached to give her son the good life she so desperately wanted to make for him. All that while she struggled to make ends meet and dreamt of (and planned) for a new condo and a future that would be more stable for her family, made us reach out to her from the bottom of our hearts, rooting for her dream to come true.
3. When A Woman Climbs Up The Career Ladder
If you think this one is cliched, don’t be. A woman getting multiple promotions and fast is always credited to her charm or ability to sell more than her professional skills – male colleagues, professional jealousies and seeing a woman get ahead of you in a male dominated field can’t just be because she’s good at her job. How does Jagruti land the stories? “We can’t do the same because we’re not a woman” is an excuse many men might not voice in public but they do believe it deep inside themselves.
Scoop astutely set the narrative straight by portraying exactly how Jagruti would land her stories. From incisive interrogation to asking the right questions, she hones her skill to connect the links in crime reporting and land a story that landed on page one through sheer tenacity and hard work. Interestingly, the way men view her success is wrapped in subtle table talk, a quiet gaze and hidden jealousies and insecurities that surface, related to the story line. And where we have men who do not respect her professional skills, we have Imran, her ultimate support system and the one who keeps her, and our faith!
If you’ve ever been passionate about your work, in an obsessive, fanatical kind of cling-on fashion, you’d connect with Jagruti’s desperation to physically teleport herself out of Sri Nagar on holiday with family and back to where the action was when a breaking story needed her presence on the ground.
4. Scoop Is Also About Self Realization
You would think Jagruti Pathak, our heroine who was innocent, blameless and wrongly imprisoned could never do any wrong. But here’s the catch. Her time in prison served as an awakening of sorts. We might not commit a life threatening crime like murder but we might still be guilty of chasing stories to make headlines that affect the lives of those who are a part of it. Often, the news stories are mere gossip or breaking headlines for us, but they could be the death of a celebrity, an unfortunate incident in the life of a public figure, a social media slander campaign – it’s all information to us, but when does information become entertainment? When does news take on commercial value, where the misfortune of one is the livelihood of another?
In covering the murder of a fellow journalist and rival whom Jagruti respected for his job skills, she raced to cover the story because, well, it was a story, not just for her, but for us too. Self realization for audiences too: She would not write if we do not read.
We gain from the pain of others in ways we are not even aware. Jagruti’s pain in prison taught her that she might shout out from the roof top that she’s innocent, the judiciary might pronounce her innocent, but deep down, she knows that although she isn’t guilty of the charges she was framed for, but something else for sure – making a story out of another person’s misery perhaps?
The desire to succeed against all odds, to win the reporting game and to break the story first – is too much ambition, in fact a bad thing after all?
5. Scoop Carries Standout Performances & Direction!
From Karishma Tanna as Jagruti Pathak to Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub as Imran Siddiqui, Harman Baweja as JCP Shroff and the entire ensemble cast, Scoop stuck together like a narrative on glue because the cast, direction and storytelling came together as a seamless patchwork of events moving back and forth to fill us in time and space till all the pieces came together to explain a convoluted political conspiracy of the underworld x police intelligence that has forever befuddled the Indian media. Such was the direction that each frame from the police interrogation to Jagruti’s time in prison were impeccably put together. This made for a riveting watch!
Scoop is a story that carries multiple life lessons but the most eerie one is also the most real and impactful.
6. Is This Me?
Perhaps the most endearing pull factor for Scoop is the way we see ourselves in all the characters – fragments of ourselves surface in Jagruti’s relentless ambition and then, a broken, yet not fully defeated spirit, Imran – our inner conscience at work, in his loyal “friend beyond colleague” mode, one can feel his pain and his lone voice, standing up for a person he believes in, tooth and nail. And then Shroff – the grey man who’s neither good nor bad and then, maybe both. The characters were fully fleshed out and fully responsive to our emotions, trials, judgements and errors of judgement – we felt fully aligned to a system we might have been a part of, helped create in a way and also, fought against at some point in our lives!
7. Scoop Is Inspired By True Events & Hugely Relevant Today
Press Freedom is a cause much touted in today’s so called free press age. Yet, there are missing persons in every regime or “democratic government” all over the world. The list is long and often there are no definitive answers to sudden deaths, road accidents or shoot outs. Despite it being the age of social media, crime reporting is a risky profession where journalists place their life in harm’s way to uncover the truth behind the injustices we face as a society.
Scoop essayed the story of Jigna Vora with a post credit of the author herself and how she dealt with life after this harrowing debacle. It is thankful and no small miracle that she lived to tell the tale where many did not survive. But her life changed forever, the fire in her was extinguished – whether she chose not to make a livelihood from breaking news stories or whether she decided to take a step back for her family’s sake, she doesn’t say, but it must be noted that we are fortunate to have her life and career time-lined in a narrative that will, essentially stay impactful for many generations to come.
The sight of an ambitious woman in a male dominated profession and hitting it out of the park through sheer hard work and talent is always a winning formula if played well and the makers behind Scoop seemed to have stuck to the narrative. Well played!
What Could Have Been Better?
Perhaps the prison sequence stretched beyond pain to a point where we wanted episode 6 to arrive and connect the dots. The final episode was a great way to end it but the 4th and 5th needed a bit of a facelift when it came to the sadness quotient – Jagruti, our heroine was getting beaten and we wanted to see her rise. Perhaps that is the challenge with stories inspired from true events, life is not all good, and perhaps that is why we often turn to superhero movies to break the overwhelming sadness of it all. Not to say that Jagruti Pathak aka Jigna Vora wasn’t a superhero in many real life ways! But her story might be easier to watch and absorb with a slight face lift in those overwhelmingly sad episodes. Nevertheless, that does not take away from the narrative.
In fact, the gruelling prison time story might serve to give the real life prison an overhaul, if that is even possible – a better quality of life for the inmates who have to survive hard times?
Lastly, it would have been great to witness a time lapse and see how Jagruti and her family (whom we were so invested in), pieced back their lives after the intense trauma they underwent. A part of that was accomplished by showing the real Jagruti aka Jigna Vora but a continuation of the reel life narrative would have been a cherry on top as well.
Scoop is screening on Netflix. Inspired by Jigna Vora’s book, “Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Prison”. Scoop is a Netflix Series by Matchbox Shots, created by Hansal Mehta & Mrunmayee Lagoo Waikul. It is directed by Hansal Mehta, produced by Matchbox Shots. The ensemble cast features: Karishma Tanna, Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub, Harman Baweja, Deven Bhojani, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Tejasvini Kolhapure, Shikha Talsania, Tanmay Dhanania, Prosenjit Chatterjee, nayat Sood, Swaroopa Ghosh, Malhar Thakar, Shikha Talsania, Ira Dubey, Ishita Arun, Sanat Vyas
