New Delhi, June 7 -- For decades, Bollywood mothers have existed in a strangely limited universe. They cried. They sacrificed. They blessed their children before a climactic confrontation. They made laddoos. Even when these characters occupied the emotional centre of a film, they were rarely allowed to be messy, selfish, angry or genuinely funny.

Maa Behen gleefully throws that rulebook into the nearest dustbin.

At first glance, Suresh Triveni's Netflix black comedy appears to be built around a familiar premise: a middle-class family finds itself entangled in a crime and must desperately cover its tracks. But what makes Maa Behen so sharply entertaining is that it understands something many thrillers do not. The dead body is not the big...