This week on new Apple TV+ limited series Shantaram, based on the best-selling book by Gregory David Roberts, Lin stares a new life in the face — but fate has other plans.
The escaped con is starting up a practice in a Bombay slum with help from his reluctant and besotted friend Prabhu. A need for penicillin puts him right where the local underworld chiefs want him, in thrall to them and in need of supplies only they can gift him.
Meanwhile, local politics are heating up, Lisa’s kicking junk, and Karla’s feeling left out. It’s a perfectly respectable episode of the drama.
Shantaram recap: ‘Bad Medicine’
Season 1, episode 4: In this week’s episode, entitled “Bad Medicine,” Lindsay Ford (played by Charlie Hunnam) is reminiscing about his murder trial way back when. From his vantage point in a Bombay slum, his conviction and imprisonment — to say nothing of the robbery and murder that landed him in one of Australia’s most notorious prisons — seem a lifetime ago. It’s time to let go of his pride and settle into his role as the village doctor/Johnny-on-the-spot in India.
He’s having trouble, though. Even with Prabhu (Shubham Saraf) and his girlfriend, Parvati (Rachel Kamath), serving as interpreters, some of Lin’s new patients don’t trust him. They can’t undress for him, as that goes against custom. Furthermore, as he’s running out of supplies and reaching the limits of his abilities (he’s not a real doctor, after all), he’s been sending his patients to the hospital. But it turns out the hospital hasn’t been helping anyone. Time to go down there and sort this out himself, he thinks.
The trouble is, the doctors there won’t work for free, even in the case of patients on death’s door. So he and Prabhu go sell their services as tourist fixers for some money. However, Prabhu doesn’t want to give up his hard-earned cash, even if it is to buy medicine for his neighbors. They have a row and part ways.
So you say you need some drugs …
Photo: Apple TV+
Meanwhile, there’s doin’s a-transpirin’ in the corridors of power. Local crime lord Walid Shah (Mel Odedra) has just bought himself a cabinet minister in the department of the interior. He needs a land appropriation, so they kill the last guy who used to arrange that and promote Minister Pandey (Alvin Maharaj), and gave him a briefcase full of cash to boot. Shah makes it very clear that if anyone comes for Pandey, they’re starting a war.
Karla Saaranen (Antonia Desplat) relays this to Khader Khan (Alexander Siddig), who decides he won’t take this slight laying down. Time to dig up dirt on Mr. Pandey.
Lisa Carter (Elektra Kilbey) is kicking dope at the home of her dealer and sometime pimp, Modena (Elham Ehsas). She’s about ready to go, so he asks her again if she loves him, if they can be an exclusive item. She’s not ready for that. But she still wants him in her life, so she asks him to return to her apartment with her. When they go back, her apartment is still full of drugs, and he doesn’t take a hard enough line when she looks like she might use again. She says that there can only be something between them if he helps her stay clean.
Lin lacks any connection for black-market medical supplies, so he reaches out to Khan for help. Of course, when you ask a gangster for help, there’s always a steep price tag attached to that. Karla goes to him to check on him; she’s worried about him getting close to Khan, knowing only too well what happens when you get into bed with him (if you catch my drift).
Prabhu redeems himself
Prabhu, meanwhile, gets back on Lin’s good side by getting Ravi (Matthew Joseph), the boy who tried to kill Lin a few nights ago (after Lin started the fire that killed his mother), to apologize and cook him dinner. Of course, the food is tainted and makes Lin sick, but he doesn’t mind. He wants the boy to find his way to forgiving him for real, in his own time.
Things seem good when Khan sends his muscle Abdullah (Fayssal Bazzi) to take Lin to an under-the-radar drug supplier named Ruby (Monique Kalmar). Her scarred visage (she suffers from leprosy, like everyone in her colony) puts him off and he almost blows the deal, but he agrees to take tea with her. Indeed, he even drinks from the same dish, proving his worth.
On the way back, they get jumped by a rival gang, and Lin once again proves himself by helping Abdullah fight them off. He’s hesitant when the thug suggests they’re like brothers now, because the last thing Lin needs is further ties to the underworld. But he’s in too deep now and he knows it. Whether he wants to admit it is another matter.
Tell me that again (no don’t, actually)
Photo: Apple TV+
The voiceover is still a problem on this show. Hunnam’s got one of the most easily readable faces in the pictures — there is simply no excuse to have him explaining the most simple things to us as they’re happening. Abdullah tells Khan about Lin saving his life, so Khan pays for the rest of the antibiotics he needs to save the people in the slum.
When Abdullah shows up with the drugs, it’s quite obvious that Lin knows they come with strings attached — that Khan will take advantage of him whenever he pleases. The look on his face says that he knows he’s making a deal with the devil, but he’s kind of excited by this, by his dealings with Abdullah. Then … mere seconds before the show fades to black … Hunnam says in voiceover, “I knew I was making a deal with the devil … but I was excited.”
YOU DON’T SAY!!??
In addition to that, Shantaram‘s identity problems are everywhere — what exactly is this show about? Starting over? Not really wanting to start over? Who could say?
The Lisa drug plotline is the dullest thing here, and I have to assume they’re keeping it for thematic resonance. Now that Karla’s been relegated to the background, the show doesn’t really miss her — neither character’s all that compelling.
But thankfully, none of this is really a problem because the show remains a perfectly engaging drama. No one’s reinventing the wheel here. Indeed, there’s a little bit of a feeling of just kind of getting this done and dusted after so many years of people trying and failing to adapt Shantaram. But this is pretty alright while it’s on, and easily forgotten when it’s over.
★★★☆☆
Watch Shantaram on Apple TV+
New episodes of Shantaram arrive on Apple TV+ every Friday.
Rated: TV-MA
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
