Brown Review: ★★★½☆ (3.5/5)
Brown succeeds as an atmospheric crime thriller largely because of Karisma Kapoor’s commanding comeback performance and the show’s richly textured Kolkata setting. While the murder mystery occasionally loses momentum and the investigation isn’t always airtight, the strong character work and moody storytelling keep you invested throughout.
Rating: ★★★½☆ (3.5/5)
Platform: ZEE5
Director: Abhinay Deo
Release: June 5, 2026
Language: Hindi
Cast: Karisma Kapoor, Surya Sharma, Jisshu Sengupta, Soni Razdan, Helen, Ajinkya Deo
Comebacks mean different things for different actors. Some return to remind you of what they once were. Others return to show you something entirely new. Karisma Kapoor’s comeback as Rita Brown in ZEE5’s new crime thriller falls firmly in the second category — and the show is better for it. This is not Karisma leaning on nostalgia or playing it safe. This is a performance that is controlled, layered, and genuinely committed to a character who carries grief and guilt in every scene without ever letting either of them tip into melodrama. It is, quite simply, one of the most assured things she has done on screen.
Brown is based on Abheek Barua’s novel City of Death and directed by Abhinay Deo, who has a track record with tense, stylish crime material. The story begins with the brutal murder of a young woman from one of Kolkata’s influential families — the kind of family whose reach extends into police departments and courtrooms alike. Rita Brown, a senior police officer with her own complicated history, is assigned to the case alongside her younger deputy played by Surya Sharma. What follows is a procedural investigation layered with the kind of institutional pressure, personal baggage, and moral ambiguity that elevates the best crime dramas above genre entertainment.
Kolkata itself is the show’s second lead. Abhinay Deo shoots the city with a deliberate, almost gothic attention — colonial buildings wearing their age visibly, narrow lanes disappearing into shadow, the perpetual humidity that seems to weigh on every conversation. It is a city that holds secrets well, and Brown uses that quality as an atmospheric tool throughout. The choice of setting is not decorative. Kolkata’s specific social architecture — old money, entrenched power, class dynamics that have calcified over generations — feeds directly into the investigation and gives the story a texture that a generic metropolitan backdrop could not have provided.
Karisma Kapoor as Rita Brown is the centre around which everything else organises itself. Rita is not the typical action-forward female cop of Indian crime television. She is quiet in the way that only deeply tired people are quiet. She has been carrying something for a long time — the show reveals what gradually — and it informs everything about how she moves through the investigation. Karisma communicates this with economy and precision, never underlining what the script is already saying, never reaching for effect when restraint will do more. It is the kind of performance that makes you realise how rarely Indian OTT material gives an actress of this calibre something genuinely worth doing.
Surya Sharma, fresh from Undekhi, brings a different energy as the deputy — younger, more impulsive, with less accumulated damage. The dynamic between the two works because Sharma resists the temptation to make his character merely reactive. He has his own perspective and his own friction with Rita’s methods, and that friction gives the investigation a forward momentum that pure procedural plotting might not have sustained. Jisshu Sengupta, Soni Razdan, and the legendary Helen in supporting roles bring the kind of seasoned credibility that lifts every scene they appear in.
The plotting, to be honest, is where the show is least consistent. The investigation has some holes that a more rigorous screenplay might have addressed, and there are stretches in the middle episodes where the pacing softens into something approaching languor. A few narrative threads that feel significant early in the season get resolved with less weight than they deserved. Critics have noted that the character work consistently outpaces the actual mystery mechanics — and that is a fair observation. Brown is more interested in its people than its puzzle, which is both its strength and its limitation.
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What stays with you is not the solution to the murder but the cost of finding it. Rita Brown does not emerge from this investigation unscathed. The show understands that good crime drama is ultimately about what investigating darkness does to the people inside it, and in that understanding it finds real depth.
A gripping, atmospheric return for Karisma Kapoor — and a very good reason to have a ZEE5 subscription.
Brown is now streaming on ZEE5.
Flickonclick Verdict: A gripping slow-burn crime drama elevated by Karisma Kapoor’s finest performance in years. Not a flawless thriller, but an engaging and worthwhile watch.