The new season of Delhi Crime on Netflix wants you to w-a-t-c-h c-l-o-s-e-l-y. Scene after scene across the six-episode series has dramatic, claustrophobic frames. Cameras are held centimetres away from faces. At times, they threaten to crawl up nostrils or pierce eyeballs.

The shooting style is better suited to cellphones rather than larger screens. It’s also distracting rather than gripping. Although Delhi Crime has the actors who can carry off this level of intense scrutiny, fiddling with focal lengths can never replace strong writing and direction.

The third season sees ace Delhi Police cop Vartika Chaturvedi (Shefali Shah) kicked upstairs – she is now a Deputy Inspector General of Police – and out of the capital. Vartika is languishing in a punishment posting in Assam when she gets a chance to return to her old hunting ground.

A gang is trafficking girls and young women, packing them off to brothels or farming them out to men in need of wives. One of the girls, Sonam (Celesti Bairagey), is believed to be in Delhi. Separately, the infant Noor lies in a hospital, put there by a teenage sex worker who claims to be her mother.

The cases have a common link: Meena (Huma Qureshi).

Along with her lover Vijay (Sano Di Nesh), her enforcer Suman (Sayani Gupta) and the madam Kalyani (Mita Vashisht), Meena ensures that every female body she meets is put to work in one way or another. Meena is in the middle of an important deal with the foreign pimp John (Kelly Dorji) when Vartika comes poking around.

Vartika teams up with her regular posse – Neeti (Rasika Dugal), Bhupendra (Rajesh Tailang), Vimla (Jaya Bhattacharya), Jairaj (Anuraag Arora), Subhash (Sidharth Bhardwaj) and Sudhir (Gopal Datt) – to pore over leads that readily fall into place and confessions that are easily made.

Delhi Crime doesn’t ease into its latest outing as much as it stumbles into it. The acclaimed series is back with a suitably emotive crime, cops fighting the good fight and a memorable villain, but also a weak, stilted plot. By its own high standards, the show’s latest chapter falls short.

The previous seasons from 2019 and 2022 delivered gripping police procedurals inspired by actual cases that also examined aspects of the city in which they were set. The investigations into a young student’s gang-rape and a group of murderous thieves that preyed on wealthy families revealed Delhi’s notorious culture of misogyny and the chasm between economic classes.

The third season is directed by Tanuj Chopra, with various episodes written by Chopra, Mayank Tewari, Shubhra Swarup and Anu Singh Choudhary. There’s nothing particularly Delhi about the latest crime anymore.

The story wanders beyond the capital to Haryana, Gujarat, Mumbai and Thailand. Meena manages to evade capture despite questionable decisions. Although apparently a seasoned trafficker, Meena’s idea of hiding is to draw attention to herself.

Badi Didi is everywhere, Suman says when she is cornered by Neeti and the Haryana police inspector Simran (Yukti Thareja). Meena’s omnipotence is most acutely felt in her dealings with the women she controls. Charming but fixated on profit and indifferent to suffering, Meena is not just the chief butcher of a human meat market but also Delhi Crime’s strongest character.

An air of half-heartedness hangs over the sub-plots, especially Neeti’s changed situation. Neeti is poised to come into her own, but that never happens. Rasika Dugal, like the others in Vartika’s team and Vartika herself, goes through the motions, enacting familiar scenarios with customary efficiency rather than spark.

Some of the dialogue is similarly on the nose. Vartika’s shock at learning about the extent of perversity involved in trafficking is bizarre, given her experience.

The series is the most convincing in Meena’s unsettling presence. Huma Qureshi is superb as Meena, whose only feeling is for money.

Qureshi’s Meena is an interesting person to know socially – until you find out what she actually does for a living. Although the creators try to humanise Meena through a back story, her monstrosity, unwavering and horrific at times, feels more real.

Sayani Gupta is compelling too as Suman, Meena’s bullying aide. Like other secondary characters, Gupta has but a few scenes to showcase her talent.

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