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With Akka, Keerthy Suresh delivers what could well be her finest act since Mahanati. Radhika Apte embodies a deliciously wicked and edgy antagonist with a cool confidence.
Keerthy Suresh and Radhika Apte starrer Akka is now streaming on Netflix. The series marks Keerthy’s second Bollywood outing after Baby John.
AkkaA
3.5/5
Starring: Keerthy Suresh, Radhika Apte and Tanvi AzmiDirector: Dharmaraj ShettyPlatform: Netflix
Akka Web Series Review: Ambitious women have long been viewed as threats, their rise to power dismissed as bloodthirsty ambition and their success attributed to a supposed loss of chastity. In Keerthy Suresh and Radhika Apte’s Akka, men’s fragile egos find expression in slut-shaming, even when women occupy positions of authority in a matriarchal society.
Spanning three distinct eras – the 1400s, the 1950s and the 1980s – the series examines how women who dare to wield power continue to provoke male resentment, get their authority challenged through political manoeuvring and attempts to tarnish their sexual reputations. This series, directed and written by Dharmaraj Shetty, is all that and more.
Who said that the underworld and unchecked political power is a man’s domain? In Akka, we see saree-clad women wielding guns and machetes, calling the shots in bed, setting men on fire or slitting their throats as revenge and taking up roles of saviours. Sisterhood is their only calling and yet, they won’t blink an eye before finishing off another woman, who wants to snatch their throne away.
Akka opens with a tale that unfolded 500 years ago when the king of Pernuru and his warriors were called to fight the Deccan war and never returned. His sisters eventually took up the responsibility to ascend the throne and protect Pernuru by forming a matriarchal society. They then learnt ancient martial arts to keep foes at bay.
Pernuru gets divided under three houses – Malemar, Perplady and Herkada. After the flashback sequences, the action shifts to 1985. We learn that the woman who occupies the throne is titled ‘Akka’, who’s the sacred guardian of Pernuru. The only catch here is that the Akkas can’t form marital relationships. But a child born out of wedlock or through adoption is allowed.
Mutthakka now rules over Malemar, the house that serves as the series’ primary setting. Her right-hand woman, Bhavani, is next in line to ascend the throne. But a woman’s rise to power threatens not just the men around her but the establishment itself. After securing the arrack tender by eliminating a rival, Bhavani finds herself up against her arch-nemesis, Rudra.
Rudra works for Shankar Anna, a Bombay-based mafia don who fled Pernuru, unable to contend with the women who held sway there. Ruthlessly ambitious, Rudra promises to restore his lost power and heads to Pernuru with one mission – to finish Bhavani off. In their first encounter, the two women engage in a poetic battle of words over privilege, legacy and what it means to be an outsider.
This could’ve been one of the most electrifying conflicts in the series. However, their confrontations, including the climactic face-off, feel somewhat underwhelming. Despite the earlier moments building anticipation and establishing a palpable sense of menace, the eventual clashes lack the fire, intensity and dramatic payoff that the set-up promises.
Having said that, Akka rarely slips up on its sense of style even as the matriarchal society feels like a cult – with their own rituals and goddesses – practicing human sacrifice. The women draped in sarees and adorned with heavy jewellery lend a strong sense of period authenticity. This attention to detail becomes one of its biggest strengths, grounding its world in a specific time and cultural milieu.
The contrast between Bhavani and Rudra is also established through their appearances and the motivations driving them. Bhavani’s regal and ruthless, yet possesses warmth and maternal instincts that lend complexity to her character. Rudra, on the other hand, is portrayed as a woman consumed by revenge, with little to her darkness beyond a thirst for retribution.
Her risque outfits and calculated use of sensuality draw on the familiar femme fatale trope. She manipulates men into taking up arms against women in Pernuru, exploiting their desires to further her own selfish interests. It’s Dharmaraj’s writing that makes Akka soar. Without its layered characterisation, nuance and thematic depth, Akka could easily have been just another blood-soaked crime thriller.
But this series isn’t merely a tale of power play and ruthless ambition. The series also offers glimpses into Bhavani’s inner life, revealing a vulnerability that lies beneath her formidable exterior. The tender moments she shares with her lover, Nanda, offer a glimpse of the woman beyond the throne. Their relationship, however, is not without conflict.
While Bhavani wants a daughter with him, Nanda insists that they marry before having a child, revealing the tension between her desire for motherhood and his insistence on marriage. Their relationship is particularly interesting. It challenges conventional ideas of domesticity, parenthood and inheritance. Nanda takes charge of the kitchen while Bhavani manages the world outside.
She also expresses a strong desire to have a daughter, believing that it’s girls, who’ll carry the family lineage forward. But Akka’s not without its flaws. Despite comprising just five episodes, each running for around 35 minutes, it could’ve benefited from a tighter screenplay. The relentless succession of conflicts makes the narrative feel overcrowded.
Further, in its attempt to stay true to its period setting, Akka occasionally makes its dialogues sound more like passages from a novel than natural conversations. Rudra, particularly, only speaks in metaphors and riddles. The exchanges feel overly crafted and mechanical, compromising the spontaneity that could’ve made them more compelling.
It’s the performances, however, that compensate for several of the series’ shortcomings. Keerthy as Bhavani truly anchors Akka. She delivers what could well be her finest performance since Mahanati, bringing in a combination of ferocity, vulnerability and emotional depth to a woman who’s as difficult to read as she’s impossible to ignore.
Keerthy has a scintillating screen presence, commanding attention every time she appears onscreen without having to resort to exaggerated mannerisms and theatrical flourishes. Whether Bhavani is coldly ordering a killing, asserting her authority over those who dare to challenge her or breaking down in moments of emotional turmoil, she makes you feel the weight of her choices.
There’s a striking stillness to her performance, a sense of thehrav that makes Bhavani’s silences and fleeting expressions as compelling as her most explosive outbursts. What makes the character particularly fascinating is the paradox she embodies. She’s ruthless enough to eliminate anyone who threatens her empire, yet capable of extraordinary tenderness in her personal life.
She’s a protector to the women who depend on her but is also vulnerable to the emotional costs of wielding power in a world that rarely allows her the luxury of weakness. She navigates these contradictions with remarkable ease, never reducing Bhavani to a one-dimensional symbol of female empowerment or an invincible crime lord.
Radhika Apte brings an enigmatic quality to Rudra, a woman whose motives are as unsettling as her methods. This is hardly the first time she has portrayed a sexually liberated woman unafraid to challenge social conventions. In Akka, however, her sexual freedom is intertwined with an appetite for power and revenge.
Rudra speaks of dreaming of becoming a mafia queen as a child and finding freedom in sex and guns as a grown-up – a chilling guns-and-roses-esque combination that gives her character a disturbing edge. There’s something deliciously wicked about the way she inhabits this antagonist with a cool confidence. Radhika makes Rudra remarkably compelling.
The rest of the cast, particularly the women, deserve a special mention. Tanvi Azmi, Monika Panwar, Nivedita Bhargav, Anjali Patil, Pooja Mohanraj and Poornima Indrajit leave an impact. But the men – Vishak Nair and Anshuman Pushkar – get somewhat overshadowed by them.
There’s something refreshingly audacious about a crime-drama that places women at the centre of both its violence and its political imagination. Akka refuses to paint its women in black and white. They can be protectors and predators, nurturers and executioners, capable of tenderness one moment and brutality the next, and it’s in this paradox that Akka thrives.
Quick Answers
Ask News18Akka is a period crime thriller series set in Pernuru, a fictional town where a powerful sisterhood of women forms a matriarchal society and holds political and social power. Spanning eras like the 1400s, 1950s, and 1980s, the story follows leaders like Bhavani who must protect their legacy against rivals and male resentment.
Ask News18About the Author
Titas Chowdhury is a Special Correspondent at News18 Showsha. She writes about cinema, music and gender in cinema. Interviewing actors and filmmakers, writing about latest trends in showbiz and bringi…Read More
October 30, 2026, 12:38 IST
