Kaiyum Kalavum is a Tamil thriller drama series released on SonyLIV on 4th November 2022. Written and directed by Roju, the series is produced by Kalyan Subramanian and has cinematography by Sandeep V Vijay. Sundharamurthy KS has composed the songs for the series while Satish Raghunathan has scored the background music.
The cast of the series includes Sanchana Natrajan, Rohit, Madonna Sebastian, Ramya Nambessan, Senthil, Karu Palaniyappan, Vivek Prasanna, Vijay Adiraj, Jeeva Subramanian, Vikas, Avinash Raghudevan, Jane Thompson, Chaams and Gajaraj. Simha and Chinmayi will be serving as the narrators of the show.
-Kaiyum Kalavum Review Does Not Contain Any Spoilers-
Once upon a time, there lived a king. He summoned a drama troupe consisting of a wife, a father, a hunter, a bookworm, a widow and a demoness and asked them to perform a play. The characters may die, but the story is immortal. In modern times, a man despises desires, while a woman despises failures. What happens if they join hands together? Will they be relieved of their curse and live happily ever after?
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The series starts off with the tale of a King who invites a drama troupe to perform a play, to convince him that a woman can be a good ruler as a man. But instead, the play gets spoiled by two actors who want to get the spotlight and in turn, get cursed by the King giving the man red itchy blisters on his hand and the woman bad luck for life.
In present times, the generational curse still haunts our main leads, who need to come together to break the curse of each other. The story follows a series of serendipitous events that bring together a compulsive thief and an unlucky pickpocket girl, inching closer to being in love with every act of theft they commit. The journey of how their paths intersect with random strangers contributing to it will complete the ancient story and help them in present as well.
The show mostly seems like a comedy, starting with a man – who must steal or destroy anything that someone else expresses a desire for. To a pickpocket group, which is more like a family of thieves, devising new plans to steal wallets and other things to run their house. The competition among them is hilarious to watch, with our lead Anbu, always ending up with empty wallets.
For the initial episodes, we get to meet various eccentric people which get associated with both the leads, but they never come face to face, with each other. In one way or another, they create new problems in every task, but also solve them by anonymously being together at the same place.
Another interesting element of the film is breaking the fourth wall and talking to the narrator directly, by looking straight into the camera. Through this, the characters express their inner thoughts and tell the audience indirectly, what is really going on in their mind and what they plan to do next.
Summing Up: Kaiyum Kalavum
The series is a fresh approach, mixing a folk tale with a modern-day twist. However, it felt a bit disjointed and stretched at times. The wait for the leads to even meet each other seems too long and feels like an end to the story. However, the actual end looks ambiguous and doesn’t really resolve the question – if their curse is broken?
There was definitely some translation error, which added some blanks and confusion in the story. Overall, it’s a good concept and the characters are befittingly portrayed by the actors. The portrayal of MGR’s influence on the characters was a nice addition as well.
Kaiyum Kalavum is currently streaming on SonyLIV.
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