With Gautham Menon’s Mammootty-starrer Dominic and the Ladies’ Purse recently doing the rounds both in Chennai and Kerala, it is time to get back to the Madras of the 1980s. Back then, Malayalam films were classified as either being too arty or too smutty and the usual commercial movie hardly gained any breathing space beyond the Palghat Gap.

Across the border, a regular film would be released coinciding with the Onam season, and then the theatres would get back to the staple of Tamil, English, and some Hindi films. However, in 1988, Mammootty’s Oru CBI Diary Kurippu was screened at Safire near Anna Flyover on Mount Road. Like the latest Dominic, the CBI series featured whodunnits and the first outing in that franchise drew crowds.

Critical applause

Dominic has had its fair share of critical applause, and while its commercial heft did not exactly progress towards the blockbuster range, the film has its support base. The first CBI venture, however, nailed both angles; it was praised by critics and became a cult hit. Mammootty played CBI officer Sethurama Iyer, shrewdly solving a murder mystery, and at times slipped in some Tamil while talking to his family on the phone.

Embellished with a taut screenplay, Oru CBI Diary Kurippu went well beyond the regular Malayali audience. The film also featured Sukumaran, Prithviraj’s father, essaying a critical role. The local populations of both Madras and Coimbatore embraced the film wholeheartedly, just like they did with last year’s Manjummel Boys or Premam in 2015. At Safire, the Mammootty-starrer ran beyond 200 days and in Coimbatore, leading police officials requested their peers and subordinates to watch the film.

Market opened

The film’s success helped mainstream films from Kerala enter the Tamil Nadu market. It also unleashed a trend of investigative films, a thread that extends till date with the CBI franchise itself having five offerings from 1988 to 2022. The craze for a ‘Mammootty-playing-sleuth’ movie was such that Jagratha, the CBI’s second venture, was also released in the prestigious Devi complex in 1989.

It also paved the way for Mammootty’s Tamil debut through Mounam Sammadham in 1990, and as tropes go, this too was an investigative thriller with the Kerala star donning the lawyer’s robe, a profession he practised before moving to celluloid.

For those seeking links, in the original CBI, one of Mammootty’s assistants was Suresh Gopi. Incidentally, his son Gokul Suresh plays Mammootty’s assistant in Dominic.

Fans in Chennai may remember Mammootty for his roles in Thalapathy, Makkal Aatchi, Kandukondein Kandukondein, Anandam, and Peranbu, but his stardom in this southern metro was first displayed through Oru CBI Diary Kurippu.