He looks like a middle-school teacher, behaves like a schoolboy and seems like the last person who would solve a crime. Eken Babu, aka Ekendra Sen, the plainclothes Kolkata Police detective from Sujan Dasgupta’s bestselling Bengali novels, ticks all the aforementioned boxes. The character returned to the big screen this Durga Puja with his fourth feature film, The Eken: Kerala-e Kurukshetra (Mayhem in Kerala). Now, Eken Babu appears poised to reach a wider audience, with Netflix releasing the three most recent seasons of the nine-season Bengali series in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.

However, the three dubbed seasons of the series leave room for improvement. Netflix clearly wants to introduce Bengal’s beloved new-age detective to audiences beyond the state, but the adapted dialogues and English subtitles lack punch.…