Glory juggles its whodunit goals and estranged father-son equation across a hoard of suspects and unreliable allies. The upshot is uneven yet watchable because of the talent on board, notes Sukanya Verma.
Key Points
- Glory is a revenge drama set in Haryana’s boxing world, focusing on a family seeking justice after a young boxer is attacked.
- The series, directed by Karan Anshuman, juggles whodunit elements and an estranged father-son relationship across multiple suspects.
- Despite an uneven narrative and trope-heavy drama, the show is made watchable by strong performances from its eclectic cast, particularly Divyendu, Pulkit Samrat, and Surinder Vicky.
- The show features a cliffhanger ending, suggesting a second season, and a predictable culprit reveal, yet maintains a grim ambiance and commitment to its dark themes.
Although the milieu is boxing and Haryana’s tough training culture, Glory‘s revenge drama has more mayhem than medals on its mind. Director Karan Anshuman, along with co-writer Karmanya Ahuja and Vaibhav Vishal’s bombastic dialogues, strive to create a hostile universe populated by insidious, sly beings becoming hard targets of a family seeking justice.
Swarming with characters of the good, bad and ugly kind, Glory juggles its whodunit goals and estranged father-son equation across a hoard of suspects and unreliable allies. The upshot is uneven yet watchable because of the talent on board.
The Premise and Plot
It all begins when the fictional boxing town of Shaktigarh in Haryana becomes the centre of bloody action after a promising young boxer (Yugam Sood), touted to win gold for India at the Olympics, is brutally attacked by three masked assailants.
Accompanying him that ill-fated night, as they attempt to elope, is his coach’s daughter (Jannat Zubair Rahmani). When the news reaches her big brothers, Devinder (Divyendu) and Ravinder (Pulkit Samrat), they rush to figure what went so horribly wrong, laying bare a long-standing feud with their ‘Coach Sir’ dad Raghubir Singh (Surinder Vicky) and the reason why their present lives are so far removed from their days of fighting in the ring.
All three are keen on vendetta, which paves the path for a truce, as they get to the bottom of the case at the behest of their powerless policeman friend Arvind (Vishal Vashishtha). To achieve their objective, Dev must return to boxing, gain weight, defeat formidable opponents and become India’s sure shot chance at Olympics.
Characters and Twists
Over the course of seven episodes and shifting focus, Glory throws the spotlight on a spate of suspects — Raghubir’s ruthless rival (Ashutosh Rana) running a fancy training academy that grooms Olympic hopefuls, the town’s bigoted sarpanch (Yashpal Singh) with a curious bovine fixation, a wild, wacky gangster (Sikandar Kher) deciding the fate of his victims by flipping coins on a phone app and a senior cop (Zakir Hussain) dictated by the bullies of his town.
The only women of any consequence on Glory‘s roster are a snoopy journalist with no bad hair days and no employment (Sayani Gupta), a hearing-impaired old lady (Krishna Raaz) permanently perched before a television set and Arvind’s lustful missus (Kashmira Pardeshi) making eyes at Devinder.
Daddy issues, generational trauma, femme fatales, masked killers, last minute boxing knockout miracles, Glory‘s trope-heavy drama is in sync with its bleak worldview filled with muted images of chopped limbs, crotch-pulling and cattle explosion.
Showrunner Karan Anshuman — popping up in a cameo as a flamboyantly thuggy boxing aficionado — does better when taking a break from hot pursuits and sparring politics to examine how deeply a father’s relationship with his children is defined and damaged by the sport.
Despite episodes lasting almost an hour, long-drawn-out action scenes eat into its running time leaving the emotional entanglement either underdeveloped or unconvincing. Just when the grounds for their grudges start to make sense, Glory unleashes one Abbas-Mustan sized twist after another, making for crazy tonal shifts and a bumpy binge watch.
Not to mention a cliffhanger ending suggesting that all the unsolved bits await a second season.
As for the big reveal, it’s not hard to figure out the identity of the culprit given Glory‘s penchant to drop hints at regular intervals. But because it’s not traditional suspense, the knowledge of who may have done it all along helps in sensing the sinister in the silence.
Performances and Verdict
There’s enough to admire in its grim ambiance — the ominous inevitability colouring the thick Haryanvi speech of its dour characters, its bearing to a real sport in its goriest avatar and the commitment to all the darkness by its eclectic cast.
Most of the actors put in a good show, some wasted without a second glance — Bodhisattva Sharma, Yashpal Sharma, Ashutosh Rana, Zakir Hussain and Sikander Kher’s comic book villain. Their parts are woefully sidelined to accommodate contrived subplots and misplaced rage.
Thriving in this motley crowd is Kashmira Pardeshi’s calm chameleon swapping between scenarios without ever letting her guard down unlike those around her.
Ultimately though, Glory belongs to its three leads.
Pulkit Samrat’s visible brawn shows he is taken pains to construct a boxer’s physicality while his wide-eyed vulnerability conveys an ongoing dilemma. Pity how little the show is invested in it.
Divyendu is spot-on as the perennially prickly son having lost his leg and life to his father’s discipline.
Surinder Vicky is only 10 years senior in age to these two yet delivers the stoic, stuck-up father with remarkable gumption. The telling glint in his eyes plays an attractive game of hide-and-seek and lends Glory the distinction it’s looking for.
Glory streams on Netflix.
Glory Review Rediff Rating:
