Pritam and Pedro review: Arshad Warsi show remains mediocre despite a Munna Bhai reunion

Review of Pedro and Pritam: Pedro is an aggressive police officer whose worst fear is being sent to the cybercrime cell. When he's not caring for his aging dadaji, Pritam is an expert at cracking codes. This boomer uncle-Gen Z team sets out to solve murders in sunny Goa when the latter becomes the former's go-to support when his greatest nightmares come true.In the six-episode series, which is Rajkumar Hirani's maiden OTT venture, veteran Arshad Warsi teams up with rookie Vir Hirani, who has experience in his father's projects.

The two posed together in Munnabhai MBBS. In this buddy adventure, they comprise two improbable halves: one is at sea when they come upon a keyboard (why QWERTY not ABCDE), while the other is hawking vacuum cleaners when they're not investigating. Why use vacuum cleaners? No one informs us. Anything goes in Goa, so it's best to avoid asking.You have to apply this same sentiment across the program, which tries to be both funny and darker than it turns out to be. Pedro and Pritam are faced with a much more difficult case: the young son of a blustering minister (Satyadeep Mishra) has been abducted, but complications arise even as a ransom is raised and things get murkier.

This comes after they solved the dead easy who-stole-the-ATM-machine case, which involved a group of layabouts as the incompetent criminals. Who is responsible for it? Are there two kidnappers or just one? Is Shruti Marathe, the minister's wife, protesting excessively?The Raju Hirani universe, where the villains have depressing backstories and extenuating situations, is a perfect fit if you consider Pritam and Pedro to be functioning within the comfortable crime thriller genre. The director who has given us good-at-heart mobsters, stone-hearted physicians and greedy bankers, doesn’t believe in pure monsters, and that is the USP of his films.