General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Murder in the Hills

Murder in the Hills (মার্ডার ইন দ্য হিলস) is a 2021 Bengali-language mystery thriller web series directed by Anjan Dutt and released on the Hoichoi streaming platform, in which the death of a retired film star in Darjeeling draws an investigative journalist into the town's hidden past¹^•². It is Dutt's first web series, produced by SVF Entertainment with music by Neel Dutt²^•³.

Key fact	Detail
Platform and premiere	Hoichoi, from 23 July 2021²
Format	One season of eight episodes, roughly 23 to 36 minutes each¹
Creator	Anjan Dutt, his debut web series; music by Neel Dutt²^•³
Setting	Darjeeling, shown through its alleys, bazaars and slums rather than its tourist scenery²
Main cast	Arjun Chakrabarty, Anindita Bose, Sourav Chakraborty, Rajdeep Gupta, Sandipta Sen, Suprobhat Das, Rajat Ganguly, with Anjan Dutt as the star Tony Roy¹
Audience rating	6.1/10 on IMDb from about 644 votes⁴
Languages	Bengali original, with a Hindi-dubbed version also distributed⁵

Spoilers

Premise

The series opens at the 66th birthday party of Tony Roy, a retired superstar of Bengali cinema living in Darjeeling, where he collapses and dies in what appears to be a natural death¹. The tagline used across platforms describes how this death threatens to expose the dark past of the hill station, with the Apple TV listing specifying the dark past of six individuals⁶.

Amitabha, a journalist invited to the party by his girlfriend, grows suspicious that Roy's death was murder⁷. His investigation begins with a diary found at Sheela's place that reveals a dark chapter of Roy's life, and continues through interviews with filmmaker Bijoy Mukherjee, a photograph at Dr. Neema's clinic, and a clue at the home of DSP Subhankar Banerjee⁸. The final episode, "Ultimate Truth", brings Amitabha to Roy's villa, where he finds himself surrounded by all of Roy's supposed friends¹.

Episodes

The eight episodes are titled Birthday Party, Secret Diary, Dangerous Bob, Kidnap, Mysterious Cellphone, Suspicious Sheela, Showdown, and Ultimate Truth¹. Their runtimes run from 23 minutes for Suspicious Sheela to 36 minutes for the finale¹.

Cast and characters

The series uses a young ensemble cast assembled by Dutt and his production team⁹. Arjun Chakrabarty plays the journalist who investigates the death; Rajdeep Gupta plays a police officer who abuses his power and intimidates people; Anindita Bose plays a local teacher with a complex relationship to the journalist and to a football coach played by Suprobhat Das; Sandipta Sen plays the local doctor; Sourav Chakraborty plays a filmmaker and Rajat Ganguly a writer². Dutt himself portrays the star Tony Roy, with Suhotra Mukhopadhyay playing the young Tony¹⁰^•¹¹.

Reviewers singled out individual performances: Anindita Bose as Sheela and Suprobhat Das as Bob drew particular praise from a Letterboxd review, which also credited the ensemble as a whole and noted the background score of indie rock and rap songs⁷.

Production and setting

Darjeeling as a lived-in space. Dutt, for whom Darjeeling was once home, wrote that the series deliberately treats the town not as a touristy location but as a lived-in space, with characters who are real and contemporary¹². He described how, in the underbelly of a beautiful tourist location, lie death, deceit, scandal, and suspense¹². The trailer coverage in Cinestaan made the same point, noting that the series does not highlight the gorgeousness of the hill station but works through murky alleys and crowded colonies, the hideouts of criminals in the town².

The shoot took place on real locations, including houses, balconies, terraces, the bazar, slums, and back alleys. Dutt wrote that many sequences were planned with Season 2 in mind, imagining how the characters and locations would look a year later, and that he had created characters he was prepared to live with for over a year¹².

Reception

The series holds a 6.1/10 rating on IMDb, weighted from about 644 user votes with an unweighted mean of 6.3; episode-level ratings ranged from 6.9 to 7.4, peaking at 7.4 for "Showdown" and 7.3 for the finale⁴. The Times of India gave season 1 a critic rating of 2.5¹⁰. A Leisurebyte review credited the acting, especially Arjun Chakrabarty, Sandipta Sen, and Anindita Bose, but judged the series to lag from glacial pacing, with unnecessary or overlong scenes in the middles of episodes, and found the final revelation unsurprising; the reviewer suggested it would have worked better as five or six episodes¹³.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026