There is something deeply unsettling about a mother being forced to live with the loss of her child. Shaque: Trust No One builds its seven-part story around that pain, following Anvita (Parineeti Chopra), whose baby girl, Apeksha, is stolen from a hospital at birth. Nine years later, Anvita is still haunted by yearly snapshots of her missing daughter. She has since had another daughter, Siddhi (Ebadat Hussain), but the loss of Apeksha has left her emotionally distant from her family. Her marriage to Alok (Tahir Raj Bhasin) is strained, while Siddhi struggles with a mother who is physically present but emotionally unable to move on.
Shot almost entirely on location in Shimla, the series has an atmospheric quality that works in its favour. What begins as an emotional drama about grief gradually turns into a police procedural and then into something much darker. Illegal surrogacy, child sacrifice, superstition, witchcraft, medical malpractice and psychological trauma are all woven into the central mystery. The story keeps widening, making you wonder just how deep the secrets surrounding Apeksha’s disappearance really go.
Anup Soni plays Inspector Khurana, an old-school cop who trusts his instincts and believes in doing things by the book. He has grown close to Anvita over the years and continues to hope that he will one day find her daughter. Veer Rajwant Singh’s Baldev eventually takes over the case, bringing another dimension to the investigation and changing its course.
The strongest aspect of Shaque is its atmosphere of suspicion. Almost everyone around Anvita appears to be hiding something. Soni Razdan plays her mother-in-law Madhu, who seems caring on the surface but has motives of her own. Sumeet Vyas is Bhaskar, the doctor at whose hospital Apeksha was abducted, while Harleen Sethi plays Anvita’s best friend Shreya, who is married to Bhaskar. Jennifer Winget enters the story as Sakshi, a new neighbour whose daughter Rhea is two years older than Siddhi. Dhruv Chowdhary plays her husband Gaurav, while Tarana Raja and Nasir Khan appear as Lajwanti, a helper at an orphanage, and the Dean of Bhaskar’s hospital respectively.
The performances are what keep the series together. Parineeti Chopra is convincing as a mother consumed by grief and carries much of the emotional weight of the story. She plays Anvita’s trauma without making it overly dramatic. Jennifer Winget is the surprise package, bringing an interesting edge to Sakshi, while Harleen Sethi gets perhaps the most layered role and handles its complexities with confidence. Anup Soni is perfectly cast as the mild-mannered, compassionate cop who genuinely cares about Anvita. Sumeet Vyas is good but is given too little to do, and one wishes the series had made better use of him. Tahir Raj Bhasin makes Alok suitably ambiguous, while Soni Razdan brings restraint to a character whose intentions remain difficult to read.
Director Rensil D’Silva smartly establishes early on that, apart from Anvita, no one is quite what they appear to be. The revelations arrive at regular intervals, keeping the mystery alive and pushing the story towards its larger secrets. There are enough twists and turns to hold your attention, and the show has the feel of a Scandinavian mystery at times, with its cold setting, troubled characters and growing sense of paranoia. There is also something of Jo Nesbø’s world in the way the mystery slowly expands beyond the original crime.
However, this is also where the series loses some of its grip. At seven episodes, Shaque feels longer than it needs to be. The slow-burn treatment works in places, especially when it allows the characters and their secrets to breathe but there are stretches where the story seems to be deliberately holding back information just to prolong the mystery. Some of the plotting feels stretched and the emotional impact is occasionally diluted by the twists.
The basic idea, however, remains compelling. At its heart, Shaque: Trust No One is not simply a story about a missing child. It is about what that absence does to a family over the years, and how grief can become so consuming that it changes the way you see everyone around you. The series creates an uneasy world where family, faith, fear and superstition constantly overlap. By the end, several questions are answered, but Rensil has cleverly left room for a sequel.
One wishes that Shaque: Trust No One should have been more tighter and compact. However, its emotional core, committed performances and atmospheric setting give it enough weight to keep you invested. The series is currently streaming on Netflix.
Also Read: Raghav Chadha Supports Wife Parineeti Chopra Ahead of Shaque: Trust No One’s Release
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: filmfare.com
