‘Six’: A sci-fi project too ambitious for its own good?
Popular Indian OTT platform, Eros Now is streaming the highly anticipated Bangladeshi psychological thriller series, "Six"—directed by Tanim Parvez. The series premiered on September 2 in Bangla, Hindi and English. The show is produced by Shohag Chowdhury and the screenplay is written by Imtiaz Shazib.
With the recent hype surrounding the rejuvenation of the Bangladeshi film industry—and a successful showing on OTT platforms—the expectation of audiences is naturally quite high.
Moreover, when the cast is star-studded with artistes like Tariq Anam Khan, Iftakher Ahmed Fahmi, Sadia Islam Mou, Yash Rohan, Shohel Mondol and Sumon Anowar, the benchmark is set even higher.
"Six" is an ambitious project, centring around the themes of human cloning, psychological theories like antisocial personality disorder, and illegal lab experiments. The series is spread across six episodes, each introducing one human clone of the central character, Zafor (Iftakher Ahmed Fahmi).
The episodes are named: "Fear", "Peace", "Sad", "Joy", "Mad" and "Power". Zafor, a gangster and an ex-convict of eleven murders, was sentenced to death for killing his mob boss, Salim Sheikh. However, a group of scientists—with the help of a government insider (Tariq Anam Khan)—give Zafor a chance to escape from execution, provided that he agrees to assist the professor to experiment with human cloning.
According to the scientists, Zafor possesses an extraordinary mind and a unique personality, shaped by his troublesome childhood. The scientists' work primary focuses on Zafor's emotional and mental characteristics, as they want each clone to embody a distinct human emotion.
The laboratory for this cloning-project was set up in a large ship away from the city. "Six" starts off with the laboratory going up in flames. The investigating police officer, Nurul (Shohel Mondol) suspects that the fire was intentional and might have been caused by someone from the lab. This inferno results in the escape of the clones of Zafor, who were held captive there.
As the story builds up, we see Zafor's life in retrospect: his father beating his mother mercilessly, his mother committing suicide in front of him, his childhood in an orphanage and his rise in the world of crime.
Different characters with different motives are introduced along the way. By the end of the series, many questions remain unanswered. For instance, 'what is the secret plan of the scientists?', 'what is the professor's real identity?', 'does the scientist, Sofia (Sadia Islam Mou) have a personal agenda behind the project?', 'is the real Zafor still alive?', 'are any of the human clones missing?'
"Six" is undoubtedly an ambitious project. However, while creating a project like this, many concepts need to be backed up by science, which was clearly absent here. The background score, at times, was underwhelming as well. Hopefully, in the next season, the mysteries surrounding this story will be solved in a much more nuanced manner.