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“Just remember, only their coats are black, not their hearts,” the narrator of court-comedy drama “Maamla Legal Hai” tells viewers at the beginning of its first episode, referring to the quirky lawyer characters that make their way through the eight part series.
Directed by Rahul Pandey and written by Kunal Aneja and Saurabh Khanna, the Netflix series is set around a group of lawyers working at the District Court of Patparganj in Delhi. Ravi Kishan leads the ensemble cast as Visheshwar D. Tyagi, an ambitiously astute lawyer who is running a campaign to become the President of the Delhi Bar Association. His biggest rival is the goon-like Mahinder Phorey (Yashpal Sharma). VD Tyagi’s biggest cheerleaders are junior lawyers Lakhmir Mintu (Anjum Batra) and Sujata Negi (Nidhi Bisht), who try all sorts of tricks to win the elections. Another subplot follows Harvard-educated Ananya Shroff (Naila Grewal), who is looking to start her legal career without any help, which proves to be a comedic uphill task.
Very Delhi in its flavor, “Maamla Legal Hai” shines best when its lawyer characters casually banter among themselves about food, clients, and offbeat cases. From a monkey who steals money to a parrot that swears and harasses women, and a convict who wants to get married while in jail, the District Court of Patparganj is often plagued by wacky cases. Each of the eight episodes delves into a different case story, and while some are hilariously entertaining, others feel contrived and boring. For example, the episode where the lawyer community tries different tactics to tackle a menacing monkey is far too long-drawn and annoying.
Apart from the occasional witty writing, Ravi Kishan (Khakee/Laapata Ladies) emerges as the strongest ingredient in “Maamla Legal Hai”, playing Visheshwar D. Tyagi with flair. Kishan’s Tyagi is a jovial, scheming lawyer who believes his biggest flaw is his lack of fluency in English, unlike an elite barrister. This is why he tricks the Harvard-returned Ananya into writing an op-ed piece for him after hearing her use English words that are not part of his regular parlance.
Nidhi Bisht is also very entertaining as small-time lawyer Sujata Negi, who has been struggling for 15 years, working from a makeshift bench outside the court like many others in Delhi’s heat, rarely ever getting a chance to fight an actual case and make a decent living from it. Her practical, middle-class personality is clashes well against the upper-class Ananya, who is new to the law game and is far too idealistic in her ideas about the justice system.
From wittily exploring class-divides among the lawyer community and the internal politics that plagues the legal circles, “Maamla Legal Hai” is largely light-hearted in nature. While the writers aren’t able to make it a consistently humorous satire on the legal system, they do deliver an entertaining watch with the family, as long as you don’t mind some of the cuss words used in a few of the episodes.
You can stream the series on Netflix.
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