November Story is a crime thriller web series, written and directed by Indhra Subramanian, and produced by Ananda Vikatan Productions. Tamannaah Bhatia plays the lead while GM Kumar, Pasupathy, Vivek Prasanna, and Arul Doss play crucial supporting roles among others. It has music by Saran Raghavan and cinematography by Vidhu Ayyanna.
Ganeshan (played by a superb GM Kumar), an acclaimed crime novelist, is found soaked in blood at a crime scene. His daughter Anuradha (Tamannaah) takes it upon herself to solve the case and prove that her father did not commit the murder. Whether she successfully manages to do it or not forms the plot of this seven-episode series.
One of the prime elements for a web series to work is that the first episode should immediately suck you into its universe and keep you engaged. Writer and director Indhra Subramanian has other ideas and takes his own sweet time to set up and establish most of the characters, and then gets into the central plot conflict around which the series revolves.
This idea turns out to be a positive as well as a negative. On one side, you don't need to invest time later in the series to establish the universe. On the other hand, one might get impatient while waiting for the crime thriller elements to begin. Tamannaah plays a character who is adept at hacking devices. While the role looks meaty on the surface, her character could have been written with more depth, considering Tamannaah's acting calibre.
The show-stealer, however, is GM Kumar, who emotes so well, especially in the climactic portions and lends a bit of realism to the overly melodramatic portions. His performance has the right mix of innocence and grief, which means that he fits the shoes of his character really well. Pasupathy too reminds us of how good an actor he is through his portrayal of Yesu, an obsessive parent.
One thing that the director must be appreciated for is the structure of the screenplay. Each episode starts off with a small flashback about Pasupathy's character, just before the intro sequence. This is a smart decision and pays off by improving the overall experience. Vidhu Ayyanna's cinematography is excellent in the retro portions, and the usage of the warm colours work well.
The music by Saran Raghavan is good in parts while it is unnoticeable in the rest. Better work could have gone into that department. Another issue with the writing is that the series runs out of steam in the final portions and kind of becomes an emotional drama. This tonal shift looks abrupt and out of place. There is a popular adage that goes, "Show, don't say." Here, the characters end up merely explaining what we see on the screen.
November Story has a lot of memorable moments and works well in parts because of the performances of Tamannaah, GM Kumar and Pasupathy. Barring the cinematography, the technical aspects aren’t up to scratch. It definitely had the potential to be a top-notch thriller but loses steam somewhere in between.