Madhuri Dixit as Mrs. Deshpande
Madhuri Dixit is back once again. This time she chose Television for her relaunch. Madhuri Dixit Nene, is one of the most iconic actresses of Hindi Cinema with over 70 movies under her belt. Her smile, and distinctive fashion (especially sarees) have made her a lasting style icon in India. She is playing Shobhna Deshpande in a six episode TV show called ‘Mrs Deshpande’. It is a murder mystery series, telecast on Jio Hotstar in the crime–investigation genre.
A Serial Killer
Mrs Deshpande is a self-confessed serial killer. She was convicted and is now serving her sentence at a far off place from her native town in Maharashtra. She is consulted by police to catch a copycat serial killer who has copied her murder signature.
While Mrs. Deshpande is in prison a new string of murders appear that replicate her earlier crimes. The police suspects that possibly the killer is acting in connivance with Mrs. Deshpande.
Her physical confinement contrasts with her continued narrative power. Every new murder pulls her back into relevance, not as a suspect in the conventional sense, but as a template, a reference point, almost a living instruction manual.
Each crime asks the same question: is this fidelity proof of influence, obsession, indoctrination, or collaboration? The series toggles between multiple ideas to create a suspense about not just ‘who’ did it to ‘why’ did it.
Slowly, the personal life of Mrs. Deshpande is introduced into the show and it is revealed that her own son is part of the investigation. Any more discussion about the plot would be a spoiler. So let’s discuss it in abstract.
A French Adaptation
It is claimed to be an adaptation of French TV show La Mante. Mante is the name of an insect whose female is believed to consume the male after reproduction. In La Mante, protagonist murdered men guilty of rape, domestic abuse, incest, and sex trafficking. Her copycat was caught with her help, 25 years later.
It is a very clever make of French La Mante without grotesque violence. A come back of superstar Dixit Nene as middle age retired serial killer. Good supporting cast and a truly fictional story which can only be made plausible on silver, oops plasma screen. The dread comes from pattern, repetition, and intent. Not from bodies displayed for effect. That restraint makes the series watchable without diluting its seriousness.
As per reviews “Madhuri’s performance as a calm, calculating serial killer was widely praised.” And that sentence hides the reality of Hindi cinema. In a typical Hindi Cinema writing style, first the protagonist’s role is written and rest get their place in story. This is what has been done in this TV show and that has weakened the narrative, a little.
Accordingly, the supporting cast does its job by not competing for attention. No one tries to “out-perform” the premise. No character other than Dixit Nene is memorable. Investigators, jail officials, and peripheral characters remain grounded, which helps sustain plausibility even when the script occasionally cheats. It is a truly fictional story, not a topical true-crime imitation or a thinly veiled real case. Its plausibility exists only on the screen.
Story has logical problems too. Tell me, a woman who is killing pedophiles, why will she leave her toddler son to be raised by a pedophile? This undermines the credibility of story. It appears it was created at the last minute to create some opening for a second season.
The Theme
It is a carefully staged comeback vehicle for a superstar, deliberately stripped of glamour, dance, eroticism, and excess. Casting Madhuri Dixit Nene as a middle-aged, imprisoned, retired serial killer is the central audacity of Mrs Deshpande. The show works precisely because it weaponises the audience’s cultural memory of her grace, beauty, warmth, and replaces it with restraint, control, and moral opacity.
Mrs Deshpande sits comfortably in the same lineage as The Family Man and Special Ops — tightly written, audience-aware, rooted in Indian realities without being provincial. It recreates a serial killer show worth watching with family. And yet it keeps a thin bloodline alive with shows like Mirzapur and Gangs of Wasseypur through controlled expletives and tonal grit, just enough to signal adulthood without turning juvenile.
This is not star-vehicle cinema in the old sense. When Shah Rukh Khan is selling detergent and Aamir Khan is endorsing digestive biscuits, that era of symbolic centrality is over. The success of this show is a proof of the ability of Madhuri Dixit as one of the finest actress of Hindi Cinema.
Most suspense or whodunit stories irritate intelligent viewers because they rely on information hoarding. The writer knows the killer, deliberately hides him, and keeps the audience in the dark by procedural tricks. That is manipulation, not mystery. Viewer is forced to play a guessing game with incomplete rules.
The Genre
Mrs Deshpande does something structurally different. The killer is present in the very first scene and the very last scene. Nothing is hidden from the narrative world. The concealment is situational, not authorial.
The killer is shown many times but not as killer. It is whodunit too within the serial killings. The beauty is to be creative in cinema making not in genre compliance.
In Mrs Deshpande, the creativity is not in complying with genre checklists but in cinematic misdirection. The character appears repeatedly in plain sight, doing ordinary things, occupying narrative space without narrative emphasis. The camera does not underline, the music does not cue, the editing does not wink. This is concealment by normalisation. The audience sees everything, yet sees nothing. This is Masala movie making.
In its original cinematic sense, masala never meant noise, vulgarity, or lack of discipline. It meant intelligent mixing of genres, tones, audiences, moral registers in a way that still feels coherent. Like a good spice mix, nothing should dominate, and nothing should taste accidental.
That is why what Mrs Deshpande does qualifies as modern masala, even though it looks restrained on the surface. It blends:
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a serial-killer framework without gore,
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a whodunit without dishonest concealment,
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psychological drama without sermonising,
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family-watchable sensibility without infantilising,
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and just enough adult edge with language, implication, brief provocation, to signal it isn’t timid.
Old Bollywood masala mixed song, romance, comedy, action, and melodrama. New-age Mumbai masala mixes genre logic, audience intelligence, and tonal restraint.
Hollywood, ironically, often fails here. It obeys genre too strictly. If it’s a serial-killer show, it must escalate violence. If it’s suspense, it must shock. If it’s adult, it must alienate families. That rigidity kills creativity.
Gender Sensitivity
The original La Mante was accused of being transphobic. The makers of Mrs. Deshpande walked a tightrope. The LGBTQ character is not written as a spectacle, a provocation, or a moral lesson. Nor is the character turned into an “opposite” of society to announce progressiveness. The person simply exists within the narrative logic, doing what the story requires, occupying space without explanatory footnotes.
This matters because much contemporary western cinema mistakes inversion for progress by turning characters into ideological counters, announcing virtue by exaggeration. That approach keeps difference exotic. Normalisation does the opposite. It dissolves difference into everyday reality. Mumbai cinema, at its best, has always done this instinctively, long before it was fashionable to theorise it.
Deshpande proves that Indian crime television can borrow the structure of western serial-killer narratives while rejecting their excesses.
Rating and Conclusion
It deserves 3.5 stars in rating.
TV show is spread in six episodes. Two are redundant. Therefore one star is cut for dragging. A six-episode serial-killer / copycat narrative like Mrs Deshpande should have tight structural requirement. Once the core premise is established every episode must either add information or reframe suspicion. If two episodes merely circulate the same facts, the tension plateaus.
A serial killer story that pauses too long risks turning method into monotony. They stretched first two episodes for creating a Robert Ludlum type double climax. In short it is a good movie stretched to make 6 episode tv show.
Such technique works in high-stakes espionage thrillers where geography, institutions, and multiple agencies keep the plot in motion. Here, in a confined serial-killer framework, it creates artificial suspense rather than earned escalation. The viewer is being held back from information the story already possesses.
This also explains why the show remains watchable despite the flaw. The underlying material is solid enough to survive the padding.
Half star is cut for neglecting intelligence of audience. Police are unable to track the phone of killer when it is repeatedly calling from the same mobile number. Hollywood uses the term burner phone but in India every phone is traceable. Soon all apps will also be traceable. They could have shown some Nangru (fictional name of app) calling but did not. Starting from 1 Jan 2026, every phone call displays the name of caller as mandated by TRAI. It is gross negligence in writing.
A crime fiction ignoring the technological reality of the society, doesn’t create mystery rather it insults the viewer’s intelligence.
Yet despite this, Mrs Deshpande remains worth watching because the core construct survives the error. The idea of an imprisoned original killer whose crimes are being replicated outside still holds psychological and narrative weight. The performances and central tension are strong enough that the viewer keeps watching in spite of the flaw, not because it doesn’t matter.
Despite the shortcoming, the series must be watched.