Review: ‘The Pyramid Scheme’ cheats on a promising idea

Goldy (Paramveer Singh Cheema) runs a mobile phone store in Haridwar and has to pay off the debts of his good-for-nothing father (Sadanand Patil). Goldy is surrounded by a noisy gaggle of aunts, uncles and cousins. The clan is ruled by the crotchety grandfather (Aanjjan Srivastav), called Babu by everyone.

While Goldy is grappling with his problems, a charismatic Tarun Bajaj (Shekhar Suman), with all the fervour of a fairground evangelist, floats a Jumbolife pyramid scheme to sell a company’s spurious products. Company head Daljeet (Ravi Behl) pulls the strings from abroad, while his recruiters, Chunmun (Vijay Kumar), his wife Pramila (Smita Bansal) and successful Jumbolife team member Divyajyoti (Indresh Malik) keep their eyes peeled out for desperate prey.

The debt-ridden Goldy walks into the trap. Along with his partner, the disgraced music teacher Manoj (Ranvir Shorey with an oily comb over and Groucho Marx eyebrows), Goldy sets out to recruit his sceptical relatives.

There was a good idea here – a web series about Ponzi schemes that prove the saying “There’s a sucker born every minute.” There have been many major scams and chit fund scandals in India. But The Viral Fever’s series The Pyramid Scheme on Prime Video doesn’t have the blend of information and entertainment that the story could have achieved.

The eight-part show swings wildly between farce and family melodrama, reaching the kernel of the plot rather late – how get-rich-quick swindles work, and how the perpetrators get away. (There really is no limit to gullibility, as horrid frauds like digital arrests reveal.)

The process of training the members and musical concerts addressed by the higher-ups in the scheme are treated in a loud manner, with all actors overdoing the Jumbolife spiel to a crowd behaving like they were at a religious congregation.

Instead of listening to the alarm bells, Goldy decides to make a success of the business in his own way. Goldy turns Manoj, who has the gift of the gab, into a Jumbolife star. Manoj becomes like a guru figure, with hordes of adoring fans all over the state.

A lot of time is spent at the concerts and picnics. There’s family drama and a silly romance. Because it all seems like fun and games, without anyone questioning the con, at no point does that clenched-stomach feeling of dread hang over the plot.

The Pyramid Scheme ought to have been a cautionary tale. But because writer Akshendra Mishra, and directors Ashish R Shukla and Shreyansh Pandey do not take the scam seriously, nor are they able to fashion a sharp satire, viewers are left baffled by over-the-top comedy and tonal shifts.

While everybody else is yelling or overacting or both, Paramveer Singh Cheema and the ever dependable Ranvir Shorey somehow tie down their scenes to manageable levels of sanity. But it is an uphill task.