Scoop digs out the hard truth of news and crime with a gripping narrative

Starring: Karishma Tanna, Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub, Harman Baweja, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Shikha Talsania, Tejaswini Kolhapure 

The Indian media and the people of the country were shocked in 2011 when Jigna Vora, a crime reporter, was arrested and charged under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) for the murder of journalist Jyotirmoy Dey. Imprisoned for nine months and acquitted seven years later, Vora wrote the book Behind Bars in Byculla - My Days in Prison. 

The Netflix series Scoop, by Hansal Mehta, is a fictional account of Vora’s ordeal. While the names and identities of Mumbai’s top police brass and media folks are altered, their reactions to Vora’s arrest are kept close to the actual events. 

Scoop—which deals with the complex and unresolved nexus of the police, the media, and the legal system—is a taut six-episode watch about the hard truth of Indian journalism, where anyone and anything is fair game to milk a juicy story. 

Written by Mrunmayee Lagoo Waikul and Mehta, Scoop is about an ambitious crime reporter Jagruti Pathak (Karishma Tanna), chasing front-page stories from the city’s top cops and outstationed gangsters.  

Pathak is close to Harshvardhan Shroff (Harman Baweja), the boss at the crime branch. She uses the standard tradecraft of playing top police officers against each other, while making slight accommodations to Shroff’s slanted advances. 

Pathak is deputy bureau chief at Eastern Age, a national daily, with just seven years under her belt, and her stories are a permanent fixture on the front page. Getting the scoop comes first for her.

Her editor, Imran Siddiqui (Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub), takes no shortcuts in assessing a story, but his fondness for Pathak is obvious because of her stellar reporting. This induces jealousy among her colleagues and, unknowingly, fans competitive spirit in her subordinate reporter. 

Unbothered about the judgement from her colleagues, Pathak chases an interview with wanted gangster Chhota Rajan. This piece catapults her to a premium league of crime journalists in the country. 

On the personal front, Pathak is the sole breadwinner of a loving Gujarati family, who are all packed together in a compact Mumbai flat. She is also a single mother who is obsessed with being on top of each story. She jets out of a family holiday with her eight-year-old son, who has returned from boarding school, to cover a top crime story, despite being conflicted. 

She goes on to cover the daylight murder of Jaideb Sen (Prosenjit Chatterjee), a seasoned crime journalist, whom she aspired to compete with throughout her career. When the police investigation builds up, Pathak’s name gets entangled as a co-accused. She is arrested and sent to prison.

The second half of this series focuses on Pathak’s struggle to survive the dehumanising reality of Indian prisons and the targeted attacks on her from people who have beef with her behind bars. 

While friends—editor Siddiqui, photographer Kedar, and lawyer Bhavesh—stand by her, an ugly media trail unfolds across print and television, pronouncing her almost guilty.

Eventually, Pathak gets bail and marks a victory against the trumped-up police charges, but her life is dismembered by her experience behind bars. 

Testimonials from Vora wrap up the series, leaving the viewer with stark graphics establishing the alarming rate of journalist deaths and arrests in India. 

Some may find the plot of Scoop dense. It doesn’t ascertain a strong conspiracy or a clear reason for framing Pathak. She is just a scapegoat, but whose scapegoat exactly? That doesn’t emerge evidently. In real life too, it is not clear as to why Vora was held for murder and charged under MCOCA. 

The series keeps one hooked with a pacy plot that unfolds like real incidents, highlighting the inherent sensationalism in present-day Indian journalism. Dramatic writing brings out the wheeling and dealing of the powerful in an effective manner.

The dubious methods used by the Mumbai police are questioned, but they aren’t central to the story. The focus is on the suffering and experiences of Pathak, a celebrated woman journalist, who finds herself alone and helpless, at the receiving end of the legal system. 

Scoop limits the drama to the belief-defying happenings during the controversial court case of Pathak. In doing so, it captures the insensitive glare of cameras and boom mikes being shoved into people’s faces—all for a juicy bite.  

A victory for this series is its ability to not make Pathak a victim or a morally bound ‘good’ journalist. When it comes to chasing a scoop, she is as hard-bitten and open to moral adjustments as any other. Only when roles are reversed, and she has to live a life behind bars, does her conscience call out. 

Another big win for Scoop is its nuanced and observational writing, which is evident in the interplay of characters. Be it the journalists, the photographers, the policemen, the top officers, or the local newspaper vendor in the nonstop whirl of Mumbai, the people in the series feel and talk like real people from the city. The series also accurately presents newsroom dynamics. 

Ayyub is excellent as the morally upright editor. He gets everything right—from snarky responses and pointed questions to inbuilt cynicism. So do the other actors playing journalists. 

Each journalist trades info and competes hard to get the big story. Information and tips become currency to get better jobs. But some among them choose to be humane and not just ambitious, though their jobs, as top reporters, do not entail them to be nice. 

Tannishtha Chatterjee, as a competing editor of Citi Mirror, who’s passionate but responsible, delivers a fine performance within her limited screen time. Prosenjit Chatterjee plays Jaideb Sen, the murdered journalist, with natural ease. 

Shikha Talsania delivers the goods as Pathak’s friend and spiritual guru behind bars, who’s angling for a central minister’s post—a character adapted from Sadhvi Pragya Thakur. 

A brilliant supporting cast (Tejaswini Kolhapure, Harman Baweja, Tanmay Dhanania) delivers a realistic portrayal of characters, in tune with the show’s pace. 

Tanna, as the protagonist, has delivered a career-best performance. She is spirited, irritable (as journalists tend to be), and tolerates no nonsense till she is arrested. Her shock and sense of desolation as life in prison turns ugly is moving. 

Scoop reflects the consistency of its producer, Matchbox Shots (which has produced films such as Andhadhun and Badlapur)—whose team is known for their eye for detail and penchant for solid storytelling. 

Scoop is Vora’s side of the story and not perhaps a well-rounded version of the Mumbai police. We don’t get to know the responses of the three top officers who were under pressure to solve the case of Dey’s murder. However, the series tackles a complicated legal and criminal incident from recent memory with a gripping narrative and multiple author-backed characters. 

This is grade A screenwriting from India, and it is recommended to all. 

Rating: 4/5