Citadel Honey Bunny – TV Review

TL;DR – This is the first Citadel show that I think captured what set out to do with this series.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime service that viewed this series.

Doing a motorbike stunt.

Citadel: Honey Bunny Review

We are now three seasons deep into this grand Citadel experiment from Amazon Prime. The first season was a complete mess, but that might have been more about behind-the-scenes issues than anything else. On the second outing, Diana jumped over to Italy and was an improvement on the formula. But today, it is India’s turn to show what they can do, and spoiler for the review: what they can do is quite a bit.   

So, to set the scene, we are in Nainital in the year 2000, and Hanimandakini “Honey” Raj (Samantha Ruth Prabhu) is dropping her daughter Nadia (Kashvi Majmundar) off at school and building up a café. However, things take a turn when Honey notices that she is being followed in the market. She dodges her pursuer, sends a coded message of alarm to her daughter Nadia (Kashvi Majmundar), and almost gets a surprise attack, but she misses the second tail. For you see, back in 1992 in Bombay, while Bunny was trying to make it in the acting world, she met Raahi “Bunny” Gambhir (Varun Dhawan), who was on the stunt team. But when Honey struggles to get work and is in desperate need of a job, she discovers that stunts are not all that Bunny does for money. On the side, he and his group Chacko (Shivankit Parihar) and Ludo (Soham Majumdar) also engage in a little corporate espionage. We will be looking at the season as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

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TV Review – Bard of Blood

TL;DR – This an interesting spy series which is unfortunately held back a bit with inconsistent pacing and the flow-on effects from that.  

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Bard of Blood. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review

One of my goals this year has been to expand my global cinema intake from places away from the traditional English speaking countries that I am used to. I have not been as successful as I would have liked, but when a new Indian spy thriller drops on Netflix you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Now I have finished it, wow, is this series a lot, and I think it might also have lasting repercussions.

So to set the scene, in Balochistan, Pakistan, a group of Indian deep-cover spies are in a lude video internet café using it as a cover as they upload important information back to New Delhi. However, before they can finish, they are captured by the local Taliban. Before they can be executed the Pakistani Intelligence forces intercede and save then, not to keep them alive, but to kill them at the right time and place. Back in India, one of the chiefs in India’s Intelligence bureau Sadiq (Rajit Kapur) feels that something is odd so he seeks out Kabir Anand (Emraan Hashmi) code name Adonis but there is bad blood between them over what happened last time in Pakistan. He instead sends Isha (Sobhita Dhulipala) to retrieve him, however, Sadiq is murdered in his home and Adonis is framed, and only he might be able to save the agents because there is a mole in the Indian government and he does not know who they might be. Now from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

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