‘Akka’ series review: Sisters in arms, Keerthy Suresh and Radhika Apte hold a mirror to absolute power

Crime sagas traditionally use women as passive anchors. Going beyond the template of mothers, sisters and daughters, Akka centres on an 800-year-old sisterhood that controls the criminal underworld and gold trade in the fictional South Indian region of Perunuru.Dressing progressive thought in a commercial gaze, the Yash Raj Films’ series seems to tweak genuine subversion into pulpy, mass-market dialoguebaazi, ultimately strengthening the very systems of oppression it claims to dismantle. But a deeper look suggests the narrative emerges from a cynical school of thought which argues that when women assume absolute power, they inevitably mirror the behavioural patterns of their male counterparts.It serves as a disappointment to those who romanticise the idea that merely empowering the ‘fair sex’ will automatically usher in a fairer world. By giving its matriarchs the borrowed vocabulary of traditional patriarchy, the series says that merely changing the gender of the ruler does nothing to alter the mechanics of social order. As always, the reality lies somewhere in between, but the argument demands attention.Akka (Hindi)Director: Dharmaraj ShettyDuration: 5 EpisodesCast: Keerthy Suresh, Radhika Apte, Tanvi Azmi, Poornima Indrajith, Mahesh Manjrekar, Anshuman PushkarSynopsis: A dominant-caste sisterhood led by Bhavani faces a strong challenge when Rudra, a ruthless outsider, launches a war to dismantle their stronghold.The queens’ descendants have carved Pernuru into three topographically distinct territories. Malemar, the central and most powerful house of fields, is led by a Machiavellian Muthakka (Tanvi Azmi/ Monica Pawar) and inherited by a more moralistic Bhavani (Keerthy Suresh). The other two houses, Perplady and Herkada, are bound by seas and mountains and are governed by the aunts and cousins within the family elite, such as Devika (Poornima Indrajith).The coven ruthlessly monopolises state tenders for country liquor and gold, eliminating all male competitors. In this strict matriarchy, role reversals are absolute. The birth of a girl child is celebrated. Men know their place, and the rules of royal lineage dictate that no woman can inherit the revered position of Akka without having a child, all while shunning traditional marriage and mainland interference. As it’s not every day that women in silk soak themselves in blood and gore, the series does give an intoxicating high, even though it’s a mask to hide its conventionality. Radhika Apte in ‘Akka’ | Photo Credit: Netflix Set in the 1980s, debutant writer-director Dharmaraj Shetty taps into the gritty, highly stylised textures of classic Indian crime dramas. The writing is crisp, the dialogues (Hussain and Abbas Dalal) bite, the production design meshes into the plot, and the show’s intrinsic logic holds firm for a large part, with narrative twists seldom overstaying their welcome.The threat to the Akka’s hold comes from Bombay in the form of Rudra (Radhika Apte). Backed by a ruthless mafia don named Shankar (Mahesh Manjrekar), who has links to Pernuru, Rudra enters the territory with an agenda to seize control of the illicit trade, with the help of men and boys like Shankar Anna (Anshuman Pushkar), whom the sisters have resisted or sidelined all these years.The central clash between Bhavani and Rudra is deeply coded in socio-economic and caste divides. The introduction of subaltern politics in the spectacle exposes the friction between institutional power and the resistance of women from marginalised tribes, who became weapons for the sisterhood and helped their queendom survive for centuries. It tells us that a matriarchy can be just as ruthlessly exclusionary as a patriarchy.Bhavani represents the entrenched elite that can write history from its own point of view. Her defence of Pernuru’s ‘tradition’ is fundamentally a defense of status quo privilege. Rudra does not appear out of thin air. She manifests the hubris, exploitation, and exclusion engineered by Muthakka. With the right combination of vulnerability and strength in body language and dialogue delivery, Suresh beautifully brings out the dilemmas of this unpaid moral and socio-political debt, even if the writing demands that she stick to the surface. A still from ‘Akka’ | Photo Credit: Netflix Framed as a ruthless rebel, Apte is cast against type as the classic, colourful disruptor whose rebellion is motivated by personal vengeance. Following the tradition of good old masala movies, she is the ‘outsider’, a proxy for marginalised communities pushed to the fringes of survival, who tries to dismantle an empire. But Rudra’s attempt to bring down Bhavani’s reign doesn’t seek to liberate the town. She wants to replace the ruler’s gender at the top and rule by proxy. It is an interesting intervention in times when every political party wants reservation for women in Parliament but refuses to look at the deeply entrenched caste and class barriers that dictate who actually gets to sit in those reserved seats.The show’s high point is the fiery, confrontational scenes between Apte and Suresh, where their contrasting performance energies perfectly feed into the power struggle. For a change, Apte plays to the ‘male’ voice, delivering a complex performance that walks a thin line. Rather than leaning into the quiet interiority of a victim out to settle scores, she deliberately channels a loud, hyper-masculine energy, using the syntax of structural violence, territory, and domination usually reserved for anti-heroes. It is like a traditional Bollywood vamp of the past, the cigarette-smoking, western-attired siren out to destroy the family unit, granted a foundational backstory and her own voice. It shows a woman intentionally wearing the armour of patriarchy to tear down a feudal matriarchy, forcing the audience to question whether she is liberating the oppressed or simply becoming the new tyrant.Akka is currently streaming on Netflix.