Clean Up Company Review: ★★½☆☆ (2.5/5)
Clean Up Company starts with a genuinely interesting idea about three struggling friends who turn body disposal into a business for gangsters. But the series soon gets buried under too many characters, subplots, and violent scenes, leaving its strong cast to do most of the heavy lifting.
Rating: ★★½☆☆ (2.5/5)
Language: Hindi
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Episodes: 8
Platform: Amazon MX Player
Director: Rohan Ghose
Cast: Jisshu Sengupta, Saswata Chatterjee, Vishal Jethwa, Ravi Kishan, Amey Wagh, Ajitesh Gupta
Rohan Ghose’s Clean Up Company starts with a premise that immediately grabs your attention. What if three young men with money problems decided to make a living by cleaning up crime scenes for gangsters? It is a strange, dark, and potentially entertaining idea, and the series initially makes good use of it.
The eight-episode series follows Raju, Swapan, and Goldie, three friends who find themselves pulled into the criminal world of Saribgunj. After a kidnapping goes wrong and the victim dies, the friends discover that disposing of a dead body can bring them a surprising amount of money.
What begins as a one-time job soon turns into a full-fledged business. The three friends realise that gangsters constantly need people who can make bodies disappear without leaving evidence behind. Their small operation grows quickly, but so do the risks that come with it.
The basic setup gives Clean Up Company plenty of room to explore greed, friendship, and how ordinary people can slowly become part of a violent world. Unfortunately, the series does not spend enough time developing these ideas.
Vishal Jethwa is one of the biggest positives. As Raju, he plays a smart, ambitious, and short-tempered young man who wants to change his life quickly. Jethwa gives him the right mix of confidence and desperation, particularly during his heated arguments with Goldie and Swapan.
Raju is also the character who seems most willing to take risks. Jethwa makes his hunger for money believable, even when his decisions become increasingly dangerous. His performance has the energy needed to keep several scenes alive.
Jisshu Sengupta is equally impressive as Sitesh Burman, also known as Mejda. He plays a corrupt politician who controls Saribgunj through fear and influence. Sengupta gives the character a cold and intimidating presence without turning him into a cartoon villain.
His scenes with Saswata Chatterjee, who plays honest police officer Indranath, are among the strongest moments in the series. Their opposing personalities create some much-needed tension in a show that often struggles to maintain it.
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Saswata Chatterjee brings his usual reliability to the role. Indranath is trying to understand the criminal network around him, but the political influence and gang rivalries make his job extremely difficult.
Ravi Kishan also features in the series as Borda, the brother of Sitesh. However, his character is introduced quite late, making his presence feel more like groundwork for a possible second season than an important part of the current story.
The biggest problem with Clean Up Company is its screenplay. There are simply too many characters and too many storylines competing for attention. Gang rivalries, political ambitions, police investigations, kidnappings, betrayals and personal problems all keep entering the story until the central idea starts getting lost.
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The series also becomes increasingly violent. Gore and killings are used so frequently that they stop having the impact they should. Instead of making the story more intense, the constant bloodshed can feel excessive and, at times, unpleasant.
The show also brings back familiar elements from the crime genre. Powerful politicians, local gangsters, rival criminal groups, corrupt systems and battles for control of a town have become common sights on Indian OTT platforms. Viewers who have watched several crime dramas may find parts of Clean Up Company familiar.
There are also echoes of shows such as Mirzapur in its treatment of gang wars, political power and the so-called baahubali culture. The comparison is not necessarily a problem, but Clean Up Company does not bring enough originality to its familiar ingredients.
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The three friends could have been the emotional heart of the series, but their lives before entering the world of crime are not explored deeply enough. We needed to understand who they were, what they wanted, and why they were willing to cross such serious lines for money.
Goldie’s discomfort with their work gives us a small glimpse of the moral conflict that could have made the story more interesting. Sadly, the series does not explore that conflict as deeply as it should.
Overall, Clean Up Company is watchable mainly because of its talented cast and unusual starting idea. Jisshu Sengupta, Saswata Chatterjee, and Vishal Jethwa give the show some much-needed weight, but even their performances cannot completely overcome the weak writing.
With fewer episodes, a tighter screenplay, and deeper character development, this could have been a gripping crime thriller. Instead, Clean Up Company becomes another violent OTT crime drama that starts with promise but struggles to find its own identity.