Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Poacher’ On Prime Video, A Drama About The Search For Elephant Poachers In India

Due to new laws and crackdowns, India had eliminated elephant poaching by the mid-1990s. But in 2015, dozens of the country’s population of 6000 elephants were being killed for their ivory; the environmental impact of the poaching would have been immense if it wasn’t stopped. A new drama tells a fictionalized version of this poaching case, from the perspective of the people who helped stop it.

POACHER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In a lush vegetative setting, we see a closeup of an elephant walking slowly. Then it gets shot in the head, slowly buckles to the ground and dies.

The Gist: In 2015, a man named Aruku (Sooraj Pops) walks into the Forest Department Division HQ in Malayatoor, Kerala, and reports to the District Forest Officer, Adil Sheikh (Sanoop Dinesh) that he’s been the triggerman for a poacher named Raaz (Noorudheen Ali Ahmed). He’s ratting out the operation because he just can’t take the guilt of killing these elephants any longer.

At a bird sanctuary, Mala (Nimisha Sajayan), a forestry officer, gets a call from a contact named Harish (Baiju Bala) about the poaching activity; she’s shocked by the news, as poaching had largely been shut down in India by the mid-1990s. Raaz himself walked into Harish’s bar and spilled the beans about where he was going to hide out. She calls an associate, Vijay Babu (Ankith Madhav) to gather a team to go where Raaz was hiding out, but by the time he gets there, Raaz is gone. The forestry officers aren’t the first to inquire about him, as they find out that vigilance officers have also been to that location.

Neel (Dibyendu Bhattacharya), Mala’s boss, calls her in from her bird sanctuary post and tells her to gather a small team of people she trusts to pursue the poaching case. There have been too many agencies going at different purposes, which has fostered a lot of distrust. One of the first people she calls is Alan (Roshan Mathew), who works for a wildlife NGO and lives in Delhi. She has a lot of cell phone data to wade through, and knows he can help. He calls a contact at another NGO to license some software that can sift through and help them analyze the phone data, but knows he has to go to Kerala to help out Mala. His boss tells him to be very careful, as the poachers have been known to associated with the Yaksuka, i.e. the Japanese mafia, and the Triads in China.

Dina (Kani Kusruti), the DFO Trivandum, is tasked with finding Morris Finn (Amal Rajdev), who has been known to buy the raw ivory from Raaz and have it carved into trinkets for sale in other countries. When he finally comes in for questioning, he at first refuses to talk, but when she threatens him with prison time for buying the bulk ivory, he starts to divulge his connections.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In a lot of ways, Poacher feels like it could be a procedural like FBI or NCIS, just with forestry officers and NGO good Samaritans as the good guys.

Our Take: Richie Mehta (Delhi Crime) created Poacher based on actual events that happened back in 2015, and the seriousness of the case is communicated to the audience right from the show’s first scene. Seeing an elephant — even if it’s a CGI elephant — shot in the head is an extreme way to start, but given the work that the Forest Department, various NGOs and other organizations have done to protect the country’s elephant population, the issue is as serious as it gets.

Like with Delhi Crime, Mehta tries to show just how complex things are when it comes to the structure of law enforcement in India, in this case when it comes to pursuing people who threaten the country’s fragile ecosystem. It seems that the Forest Department are at odds with traditional law enforcement, never really pulling together to get the desired result. What Mehta also effectively shows in Poacher is that the poaching business is no joke, pointing out a real-life incident where a forestry officer was decapitated by a notorious poacher during an investigation.

There are a lot of players in this story, and a lot of characters to keep track of, but the story will likely center around Mala, and Nimisha Sajayan is up to the task playing her. We see in a scene with her mother that she’s an animal lover — she has a lot of dogs — and that passion comes through as she tries to get through the data her boss gives her during the investigation. Even though the investigation will likely reach a pretty wide swath of the subcontinent, it’s smart for Mehta to have it center around one character, who is likely an amalgamation of a number of real-life forestry officers who made a difference in this case.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Alan is advised by his boss to be very discreet during his investigation, citing the case of the murdered forestry officer as an example of what these poachers are capable of.

Sleeper Star: Speaking of Alan, Roshan Mathew plays him with the right combination of passion and quirkiness. There’s a scene where he poses as a doctor at a Delhi hospital to diagnose someone with a snake bite, because he’s known to care for snakes. Any chance Mehta has to show some character quirks in this jam-packed show is appreciated.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Alan asks his contact for bank info so he can buy the CDR analysis software, the contact says, “Forget it, just catch these fuckers.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Poacher finds entertaining drama in a topic that is rarely seen on TV, but is critically important, given the impact elephant poaching has on the environment.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.