Mumbai Diaries 26/11 review: An urgent and swift series that feels authentic

Mumbai Diaries 26/11 cast: Mohit Raina, Konkona Sensharma, Shreya Dhanwanthary, Natasha Bharadwaj, Tina Desai, Satyajeet Dubey, Mrunmayee Deshpande, Prakash Belawadi

It was the 26th of November, 2008. Ten highly trained terrorists, armed with machine guns and explosives stuffed in their backpacks, came off a boat off the Gateway of India, and unleashed death and destruction at various points in South Mumbai. 26/11 has been rightfully dubbed the worst terror attack on Indian soil: the brazenness and the shocking swiftness with which it was unleashed, and the horrific death toll (172 dead, over 300 injured) laid bare the complacence and glaring lacunae in India's internal and external security.

The repercussions of those three days and nights (the last of the hostages were rescued on the morning of the 29th, with nine out of ten terrorists shot dead; Ajmal Kasab was taken into custody, and hanged, after a prolonged trial, in 2012) continue to be felt to this day. Several films have been already made on the event: amongst the most prominent ones are Ram Gopal Verma's 'The Attacks of 26/11' and Anthony Maras' 'Hotel Mumbai'.

'Mumbai Diaries', the new web series created by Nikkhil Advani, is a selectively fictionalised account of that first dark night. In the way it melds fact and fiction, you don't quite know whether what you are watching actually happened, or whether it a figment of imagination of the writers of series', even if several moments clearly look manufactured for the purposes of heightening drama, and suspense. You know you are being played, but you let it be, because the rest of it works as a hospital drama set in the backdrop of the attacks. And no, this is not India's 'Grey's Anatomy', even though we spend a significant amount of time with doctors and surgeons and nurses, in scrubs and masks, going about their jobs and saving lives under extreme circumstances.

We see the terrorists enter the 'Palace' Hotel, where a courageous hospitality executive (Tina Desai) is intent upon leading a group of guests to safety. We see them careering down Marine Drive in a captured ambulance (how they manage to whistle up an ambulance in a strange city isn't shown; these are tiny details which stick in your craw). We see a pushy TV reporter (an effective Shreya Dhanvanthary, who had better stop accepting anymore journalist roles for fear of being typecast) chasing the story, and we see her relaying back those dribbles of information to the newsroom, jostling with the others of her tribe, being kept at bay by security personnel outside the hotel and the hospital under siege.

But for the most part the series stays focused on the Bombay General Hospital (standing in for the real-life Cama Hospital), whose doctors and nurses went above and beyond the call of duty to tend to the grievously wounded, as they kept being brought in from the bloody shooting at the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminal (CST). The Taj Hotel is called the Palace Hotel, unlike the other spots overrun by the terrorists which go by their real name — Leopold Cafe, Nariman House, Trident. Why does 'Mumbai Diaries' use some real names, some fictional? We never really get to know.

What we do know is that after creating murder and mayhem in other designated spots, a couple of terrorists attack the hospital where two of their men are held, one saved by the maverick-brilliant- mercurial Dr Kaushik Oberoi (Mohit Raina). He and his colleagues, Chitra Das (Konkona Sen Sharma), the pugnacious hospital boss Dr Subramaniam (Prakash Belawadi), the indefatigable nurses (Balaji Gauri, Adithi Kalkunte), the three new trainees (Satyajeet Dubey, Natasha Bharadwaj, Mrunmayee Deshpande), the wardboys vividly create an ecosystem in a typical 'sarkari' hospital, all grungy corridors and bedraggled wards, where the requisition of life-saving equipment is first done in triplicate, and then sat upon, but where the life savers do what they have taken the oath to: save lives.