‘Eyes’ series review: Manu Ashokan’s show pans in on stalking, sans the romanticising

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Shruti Ramachandran and Nikhila Vimal in ‘Eyes’ | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

At the outset, the Malayalam show, Eyes , streaming on SonyLIV, looks like another police procedural, another crime-driven series of events. Directed by Manu Asokan , the pace seems a tad bit languid as it takes time to draw the viewer in. Though the opening sequence is shocking, it takes some time for the action to suck one in. It could also be that each of the seven episodes at 50-plus minutes makes it feel like too much time has been spent with Eyes .

The action pivots on a team that the police support to identify dangerous stalkers (prone to causing harm) and take preventive measures. The tagline is ‘Watch. Defend. Protect’, which it attempts to do. At the heart of this project is a software, Eyes, which helps monitor stalkers, with input from the core team’s two mental health professionals and two cops. The project is also a test of whether the software can help identify dangerous stalkers and prevent them from escalating.

The core team comprises Ayesha, Vidya, Tina Sebastian, Tanvi and Justin, essayed by Nikhila Vimal, Shruti Ramachandran, Kani Kusruti , Athira Patel, and Prabhu Muralikrishnan respectively. The others in the cast include Prem Prakhash, Jaffer Idukki, Sudhi Koppa, Saniya Iyyappan, Dev Mohan, and Parvathy Krishna.

Vidya developed the software and has put everything on the line for it; Ayesha and Tanvi are the mental health professionals. Tina and Justin are the cops. This project is a make-or-break attempt for Vidya. It mustn’t be shut down, and she does whatever it takes, including illegal measures, to revive it.

When we come into the action, the Eyes team is getting back together after a break, following a rift among the team members when a case goes terribly wrong and they blame each other. The team regroups, reassesses their priorities and learns from their mistakes.

The series not only gives a peek into the lives of women who are stalked but also an insight into how insidiously it operates to control victims. An important takeaway is that an unhealthy obsession with another human being has no class.

So, we have an IAS officer with a narcissistic personality disorder, who would go to any lengths to control his wife, a criminal obsessed with a shop assistant, an alcoholic who threatens to kill his wife’s family if she leaves him and an average Joe who stalks an actor. These stories, structured episodically but segueing with the action rather organically, give faces and stories to all those stalker-crime headlines.

Anjana Nayar’s story, scripted by Bobby and Sanjay, keeps it real. The team cannot prevent all the crimes. Jessy, bound to an alcoholic childhood sweetheart who is now her husband, feels so trapped that her battered wife syndrome does not let her see how precarious her condition is and refuses to be “saved”.

As we follow the narrative, we see the stories and struggles of the team members as they navigate personal and professional issues.