The quirkiness in Pravinkoodu Shappu erupts from its characters. At the helm of things, you are introduced to SI Santosh (minimum guarantee Basil Joseph), a goofy cop that is shown to boast of his investigative skills by revealing that he once solved a case in under 10 minutes without the use of any violence. However, he is reluctant to take the case here because he claims that his tryst with toddy triggers a past trauma. There is a playful energy that he brings to the table which is unlike a cop that you will ever see with a typical trait of toxic masculinity being non-existent. To give him company (from a storyline perspective), you are introduced to the characters of Kannan (Soubin Shahir) and Suni (Chemban Vinod Jose), who are prime suspects behind the ‘murder’ of Babu (Shivajith Padmanabhan), a hyper-masculine alpha male who would often be involved in brawls in the village. But the reasons are different for Kannan and Suni – the former did suspect Babu to have an affair with his wife Merinda (Chandini Sreedharan), while the latter was suspected for Babu’s hinderance in a land deal gone wrong with Suni being the real estate agent of the same. What follows is a frequent oscillation between the past and the present, thereby repeated unfolding the central event through the Rashomon effect.

The one aspect that remained a slight downer for me was the excessive need to stray into the past and flesh out a backstory for its characters. One fundamental rule of the investigation remains of the ability of the writing to stay in the present, something that would hold the attention of the viewers while coaxing them into playing the guessing game. I could sense all the required elements on paper but the structure itself was so convoluted, that it didn’t completely hold my attention in the drama. Make no mistake, the events are watchable and the world building would often drowse you in a bout of quirky humour, every now and then. But unfortunately, it doesn’t necessarily come together at the end. For instance, we are told about a startling ‘personal’ connection that Santhosh has with Babu with regards to his past. And this information comes at such a crucial time that made me anticipate a twisted approach to the investigation. But that plot never really circled back at the end.

To be fair, the humour in the screenplay does make you chuckle. In a hilarious scene at the police station, you see a violent outburst from Santhosh for the very first time. In another scene, you see Santhosh predicting the number of years of marriage with regards to a character by just looking at her chain. And in a scene, you literally see Santhosh rushing to save a character by riding on a bike in his boxers, only to eventually lose his way. Each of these sequences are hilarious and had me chuckling through my teeth. But the balance between a mystery and its quirky humour doesn’t always land. The proceedings remain dense with a lot of information including an arrest, a conjecture on an accomplice, a shadowy creature lurking in the field at night and a budding affair, that frequently takes you out and brings you in throughout the drama. And the reason for the same is that each of these plots are fleeting, with none of them being latched upon and dug deeper.

There are a few intriguing plot-points in the second hour including a wild bus and bike chase that is pacy while adding intrigue and tension to the proceedings. Another plot-point shifts the radar of the investigation to the cop, while putting him under the limelight. In a way, the attempt was to draw a parallel between two simultaneous investigations that transpire together. But the falter lies in its final act that doesn’t live up to the amounts of tension leading up to the revelation. The issue lay with the exposition that was not only too long and winding, but the creative idea to run a parallel edit between the exposition and the sequence of events behind the incident in question, was always an uphill battle in terms of the execution. The high that you would expect after a revelation just wasn’t there, and an additional sense of criticism lay in the fact that some of the previous arcs were just used as a distraction, while never quite coming together at the end. Overall, the screenplay had its moments to shine but did not always land with the desired impact.