Mumbai Diaries 26/11 review: The show works best when, in between all the craziness, some of the characters stop to take a breath, and exchange glances or words. It makes you believe that there is still some goodness in the world.
To begin with, it is difficult to slot Mumbai Diaries 26/11, now on Amazon Prime Video. Is it a medical thriller or a crime story? Set during the Mumbai terror attacks in November 2011, most of the eight episodes, stretching between 30 and 55 minutes, unfold in the Bombay General Hospital; some veer towards the Palace Hotel (Taj Mahal), in front of the Gateway of India. It would have been prudent to have focussed on the hospital scene, cutting down on the number of episodes. This could have turned the series, helmed by Nikhil Advani and Nikhil Gonsalves, into a tighter and more effective work.
The plot revolves around Dr Kaushik Oberoi (Mohit Raina), who delivers, even opening up the chest cavity and getting the heart pumping again, but throws protocol to the winds. This angers the hospital chief, Dr Mani Subramaniam (Prakash Belawadi), and the law enforcement agents. But when pandemonium sets in with several terrorists waging a war against India’s financial capital, the hospital, swamped by the injured and the dying, have to look the other way when Oberoi works in ways that may be highly questionable. He performs surgeries outside the operation theatre, and even revives a 77-year-old destitute patient by performing a procedure that is just unthinkable.