Question: How good is this series?
Answer: I finished the series in one marathon session of 7 hours. That good!
Question: Apart from a few well-known names, is the cast worthy of justifying their role(s)?
Answer: You would be stunned by the acting. The actors are as good as the script. There are more number of pivotal characters than there were in "Sacred Games". You would be pleasantly surprised that all of them have been given enough screen-time and none of them are unimportant. What an ensemble! Wow!
Question: Is it better than Sacred Games?
Answer: First of all, we MUST NOT compare the two series.
"Crime", "Thriller", "Action" are the common genre between these two series. However, Mirzapur has done tremendous justice to it's script and carved out a niche space for itself.
I had watched Sacred Games just a week before Mirzapur and after reading the panning reviews of Mirzapur, I decided not to watch it. One of my close friends - Sasi, told me to forget about the review(s) and give the first episode a try. I would like to quote him here: "It is far better than the number of stars the critics have awarded." HE WAS DAMN RIGHT.
Sacred Games has used the terms of ancient Indian history (or mythology, whichever word you would like to use) to narrate the story. Mirzapur doesn't have that level of narration - Yes! ... But you would be gravely mistaken to take this point against Mirzapur. Each and every episode is gripping with sometimes gory and sometimes an undertone of humor which would never let you feel enervated.
All the actors have done a phenomenal job. The women have been given lots of freedom. The documentary(ies) which BauJi keeps watching frequently, has 100% relevance in the context of the episode and the series.
Everyone knows about Pankaj Tripathi's prowess. He doesn't need further introduction (nor do the others), but I would like to mention Guddu (Ali Fazal) as a revolutionary character. The way he has portrayed his passion for body-building, his dumb-wit, his self-assured and self-serving bias; it will blow the viewer away. After watching a few episodes, I had started to wonder if someone can be really so eccentric and so blind due to self-obsession. He just cares about how to live through the current moment in time, nothing else. In my humble opinion, I think that every character is a shade of different level of narcissism. Just visualize, how could a writer conceive the idea of so many narcissistic characters. ;-)
If I ever meet Guddu Bhaiyya (Ali), Munna Bhaiyya (Divyendu Sharma) and Bablu Bhaiyya (Vikrant Massey), it would be extremely difficult to imagine them as a different person than their portrayal.
I would like to quote my friend again: This series is far better than the ratings you would come across on various critics' web pages.
The only reason I wrote this first-ever review on IMDb is because I could not digest the admonishing and panning of a beautiful work done by these fine actors and writers (and everyone involved in the project).
