variety.com
11.10.2022 / 17:41
‘Shantaram’ Makes Charlie Hunnam the Hero of an India-Set Drama: TV Review
Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic “Bombay felt exhilaratingly free, a place where everyone started new.” That’s Lin Ford, played by Charlie Hunnam, speaking to us in voice-over about the city where he hopes to begin again. Today known as Mumbai, the Indian metropolis is many things; on “Shantaram,” it’s the staging ground for a white fugitive to lose and find himself. It’s that dynamic that tends to frustrate over the course of a long season. Based on the novel by Gregory David Roberts and executive produced by Steve Lightfoot, “Shantaram” is set in the 1980s, in the wake of Lin’s prison break. Making his way out of an Australian penal institution in the pilot episode, Lin, a recovering heroin addict, seeks to disappear into a city of millions before, potentially, moving on, but is perpetually drawn toward an intriguing, possibly amoral woman named Karla (Antonia Desplat). Rooted in place by this sense of nascent romance and by a growing affection for the place and its people, Lin begins establishing a life, even while repeatedly telling us that he’s aware that his past — his identity as a wanted man and his knowledge that he’s being urgently sought by the authorities — makes all of this a holiday from reality.