This week on Apple TV+ drama/thriller Shantaram, it’s all about escapes. Lin knows a story about his medical work will bring his flight from justice to the attention of the authorities, so it’s time to leave Bombay.
Meanwhile, Prabhu and Parvati want to marry in secret before her parents can prevent it. Lisa discovers Modena is still up to his old tricks, and now she wants out of their new arrangement. And just when Lin is in line for a fake passport, a whole new situation arises that threatens his freedom. It’s a suitably tense time.
Shantaram recap: ‘Dead Man Walking’
Season 1, episode 6: In this week’s episode, titled “Dead Man Walking,” Dale Roberts/Lindsay Ford (played by Charlie Hunnam) once again endures a prison flashback. He’s being grilled by detective Wally Nightingale (David Field).
This evil fellow had been laying the beatdown on Dale pretty hard, but he hasn’t cracked and given up his accomplice. So Wally decides to play hardball. He has one of the other inmates bring them a beer, and then he loudly congratulates Dale for his “victory.”
Dale knows this means one thing: Word about him being a snitch will hit the general population in about 30 seconds. The rest of the inmates already think he turned supergrass, so he might as well actually do it, right? He escaped that day having not confessed to anything before they could kill him.
In the present day in Bombay, Dale/Lin is thinking about this moment as a threat to his freedom arises. Kavita (Sujaya Dasgupta), the rich girl who wants to do a story on him becoming a doctor in the slums, is pressing hard into his background.
Got to get out of Bombay
Lin knows his days in Bombay will be numbered unless he kills the story. He asks Prabhu (Shubham Saraf) to vouch for him being on the level about his trying to stay out of the newspapers. If they remain under the radar, they’re better able to function, is their argument. Kavita says she’ll drop it but Prabhu and Lin know better. Lin starts trying to finance a new fake passport ASAP.
Lisa Carter (Elektra Kilbey) finds out that her boyfriend Modena (Elham Ehsas) is raising money for their own exodus from Bombay by getting into bed with Lisa’s former dealer, Madame Zhou (Gabrielle Scharnitzky). Lisa is furious. That woman is dangerous — she’ll kill them if it seems even remotely convenient.
If Khader Khan (Alexander Siddig) finds out Modena and Maurizio (Luke Pasqualino) are selling heroin for Madame Zhou, he’ll probably kill them both. If Lisa finds out that Modena is still entertaining offers from customers to have sex with her to sweeten the drug sale, she might kill both of the hapless lowlifes. So of course, that’s exactly what happens. Her and Modena’s courtship appears to be at an end.
Speaking of making a killing, Khan’s men have put the squeeze on people close to Minister Pandey (Alvin Maharaj). They want to know his schedule … and you tend to only want that if you’re going to kill someone. Karla Saaranen (Antonia Desplat) doesn’t know about this yet, but she does catch wind of the Zhou heroin deal and tries to warn Lisa.
Everyone’s trying to get over
It’s a week of under-the-radar plans. Prabhu and Parvati (Rachel Kamath) decide to get married in secret because her family doesn’t approve of her working for Lin, and Prabhu didn’t have the heart to ask Lin to deliberately tell her to stop being his nurse.
Prabhu knows how much joy Parvati gets out of helping people — it may indeed be her calling. She sees him not promise this, and rewards him by letting him propose to her. So he and Lin both need money. And, after a day of milking tourists for petty cash, they realize it isn’t enough. They’re going to have to sell the motorcycle Abdullah (Fayssal Bazzi) gave to Lin as a thank-you for saving his life. Prabhu doesn’t know how much he needs money — Parvati gets sick and needs a doctor.
Of course, nothing is ever simple. Didier (Vincent Perez), the man Lin is paying for a fake passport, gets arrested for sleeping with another man’s wife. If Lin wants his passport, he must bribe the police to let Didier go. Doing so means breaking a date with Karla, but he’s in a bad way.
The trouble is going back to the prison to get him out. Lin is nervous at the best of times — going back to a prison brings out his worst paranoia and trauma. And naturally, one of the cops recognizes him from his first week in the city and tries to lock him up. However, his superior wants Lin’s money more than he wants Lin behind bars.
Where is he when we need him?
Pretty compelling stuff this week. I like that even in an episode where there’s a cliffhanger in seemingly every scene, you still don’t feel jostled about by the drama (I recognize that this doesn’t exactly sound like a compliment and I guess there’s an argument to be made that this show is a hair too laid back). Compared to something like Suspicion, another Apple TV+ thriller series, Shantaram is basically a hang-out show. It’s as much about the vibe of any given room as it is the people in it or their life-or-death situations.
Now, in my opinion, it could be even more of a vibes show, but I get that that’s not the best strategy when you’re trying to keep the stakes high. But you do know that this show isn’t all business (Hunnam’s super laid-back performance sets the pace and the tone). And you get to enjoy the little moments of oddball camaraderie and charisma this mostly excellent cast brings to each scene.
Shantaram steadfastly refuses to focus up like a more traditional narrative. Perhaps this keeps it from greatness, but it does stop the show from feeling as depressive and downbeat as its many elements suggest it ought to be.
Yes, it’s about the poorest of the poor being manipulated by rich gangsters, about people who can’t afford medical care so they go to an escaped fugitive for help. Still, Shantaram also refuses to judge anyone here for the many decisions that led them all to this place. It’s becoming a pretty alright place to be week after week, if only for that air of “whatever works” from its characters and from the show’s unemphatic camerawork.
★★★☆☆
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.
