Madhuri Dixit’s Mrs. Deshpande is streaming on JioHotstar. The series centres on Mrs. Deshpande, a middle-class woman navigating marriage, ageing, identity, and emotional isolation.
Mrs Deshpande arrives with two undeniable advantages: the narrative backbone of the acclaimed French series La Mante, and Madhuri Dixit in a role that dares to strip away familiarity. Directed by Nagesh Kukunoor, the psychological crime thriller series sets out to examine the uncomfortable space where evil and empathy collide. For the most part, it succeeds, anchored firmly by a performance that is both unsettling and hypnotic.
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At its core, the series asks a difficult question: can a monster also be a mother? And what happens when the past refuses to stay buried?
Madhuri Dixit plays Mrs Deshpande, a convicted serial killer serving a life sentence under a false identity in a Hyderabad prison. When a copycat killer begins recreating her crimes in Mumbai, the police are left with no choice but to turn to the very woman they once locked away. She agrees to help, but on her own terms. The most striking of these is her demand to work only with Inspector Tejas Phadke, played by Siddharth Chandekar.
{Spoilers alert}
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What initially seems like a strategic preference soon reveals a far deeper wound: Tejas is her estranged son. This revelation adds emotional weight to every exchange, turning routine interrogations into psychological minefields. Dixit’s performance thrives in silence as much as speech; a raised eyebrow or a half-smile often carries more menace than dialogue.
Kukunoor frames her not as a spectacle, but as a presence that dominates every space she occupies. Even behind bars, she is always one step ahead.
Crime meets consequence
The investigation unfolds through misdirection, layered clues and shifting power dynamics. Commissioner Arun Khatre, played with quiet restraint by Priyanshu Chatterjee, embodies the moral conflict at the heart of the series. Once responsible for her arrest, he must now rely on her intellect, even as it unsettles his conscience.
While the pacing occasionally falters and some plot turns feel familiar to seasoned crime-thriller viewers, the emotional stakes keep the series engaging. The mother–son relationship is its strongest thread, turning procedural tension into something deeply personal.
Mrs Deshpande may not reinvent the genre, but it offers a gripping study of control, guilt and inherited trauma. And at its centre stands Madhuri Dixit, proving that menace can be as graceful as it is terrifying.
