Shantaram Review: A Shallow Journey to a Picture-Perfect Paradise

Based on Gregory David Roberts’s 2003 novel, Shantaram tells the story of Lin Ford (Charlie Hunman), an Australian bank robber who escapes from prison and begins a new life in India. From the start, Apple TV+’s adaptation conjures its sense of place beautifully, immersing the audience in a bustling, bombastically colorful vision of 1980s Bombay. It has a particularly gorgeous way with light and shadow, from the sweltering sunlight that Lin first steps into to the lamp-lit nights of a city that never sleeps.

Reyanaldo’s Café is the heart of both Bombay and of the series, exuding the same half-glamorous sleaze that Rick’s Café Américain did in Casablanca. It’s the place where expatriates and outsiders congregate to drink, laugh, and exchange carefully edited versions of their past, where elicit deals can be carried out without interference and criminal rivalries can be laid aside. Most of all, it’s a deeply enjoyable place to spend time as a viewer.

Lin first steps into Reynaldo’s Café as a stranger in a strange land, on the run from the law and with little more than a few dollars and a fake ID. It’s there that he befriends Prabhu (Shubham Saraf), a local tour guide who introduces him to the “not-people” living in a shantytown on Bombay’s outskirts. Lin’s experience as an ambulance driver quickly earns him the role of the village doctor and soon he begins to immerse himself in their community.

At first glance, Shantaram can be easily viewed as a “white savior” narrative, especially given the way that characters like Prabhu lean uncomfortably close to stereotype. Early on, he exists mostly as a chipper sidekick to provide relief from Lin’s weighty emotions, a pair of wide, wonder-filled eyes for us to see our hero’s radiant goodness reflected in.

The series also trades heavily in a sort of Eat Pray Love-style wisdom, like when Lin is asked if he’s going to India to find himself. “No,” he replies with a wise smile, “I’m going to lose myself.” Lin’s voiceover and conversations are composed of little more than half-baked aphorisms in the first few episodes. It all adds up to a tourist’s-eye view of a lushly drawn setting that may be little more than the vibrant backdrop against which a white man can learn some personal lessons.

For a recovering heroin addict and former bank robber tormented by a guilty past, Lin is strangely edgeless. But while his big, friendly Golden Retriever energy seems a little at odds with the story, it does make for an interesting character portrait, as Lin is the polar opposite of prestige television’s scowling antiheroes. Hunman truly sells the idea of this man who could be tossed thousands of miles from home and immediately start making friends. It’s telling that many of his missteps come not from giving in to greed, anger, or ego, but by wrongly expecting other people to act with the same sense of fairness that he does.

As Shantaram progresses, however, it leans less heavily on neat turns of phrase, giving its supporting characters more room to breathe and eventually finding its way beneath the surface of its lush setting. Lin’s work in the village quickly brings him into contact with Khader Khan (Alexander Siddig), a crime boss who likes to wax philosophical. There’s a little of Don Corleone about him in that his words ring just as true when he’s speaking gently to his loved ones as when he’s making threats to his enemies. He’s a powerful man with a complicated life philosophy, not just another guy with a passion for monologues and murder.

It’s also at this point that the series effectively subverts the conventions of the white-savior story, as Lin’s most well-intentioned actions are often shown to have dire consequences because of his ignorance about the inner workings of Bombay. “Only a fool chooses to play the game without knowing the rules or the players,” he’s warned by a local drug dealer after another one of his attempts to involve himself in local affairs backfires.

Mostly, though, Shantaram suffers from a problem that is symptomatic of the streaming era: Despite the novel’s 900-plus pages, the series should have been a movie. Lin seems to be on the brink of leaving Bombay in almost every episode only to be thwarted and never quite make it, turning a picture-perfect postcard of a trip into a seemingly endless journey.