Paatal Lok Season 2 Is Slick, Smart & Superbly Acted, But Falls Short As A Follow-Up

IT’S NOT UNTIL THE HALFWAY MARK of its hotly anticipated second season that Paatal Lok feels like it has relocated to a familiar, affecting place. An unlikely death triggers an emotional slide into the abyss of chasing shadows with broken mirrors as a lens. Hathi Ram Chaudhary, the titular, police inspector played by the excellent Jaideep Ahlawat, reclaims at this juncture, his position as the canvas of a narrative that has until then flirted with the idea of picking up other brushes. Paatal Lok is about the rot in humanity, but also about the goodness that tries to survive alongside the filth. Not out of some grand plan to exact a form of heroism, but to simply prevent the drainage pipes of society from welling up. The Chaudharys of our world are therefore surgeons, quietly flushing out these pipes without anyone noticing. The much-awaited second season isn’t a patch on the audacity, and the violent, twisted core of the first. Yet, despite initial hiccups, it ultimately unrolls into a worthy survey of a world, from where purgatory feels like an acceptable exit door.

The second season begins with the murder of the Naga political leader Jonathan Thom, in Delhi to attend a crucial investment summit for the state. Years after the events of the first season, this is a world where Ansari, played by the dependable Ishwak Singh, has cleared the civil services exam to supersede Hathi Ram in rank and authority. Both happen to converge on the same case via different routes. Ansari is chosen for the job, whereas Chaudhary, as is often his thing, becomes the man unwittingly in possession of its most crucial thread. The two decide to collaborate on an investigation that takes them from the Nagaland Sadan in Delhi to the beaming, yet daunting peaks of Dimapur in the north-eastern state. It’s between the two cities the story ebbs, flows, crashes and ultimately cracks open.

Every time creators from the Mumbai industry head to the North East to set a story, the results are unwieldy, odd and even offensive. The word ‘exotic’ echoes inside the skull and for a fair amount of time, it’s a threadbare plank of authenticity that this season of Paatal Lok walks. There is hardly a problem with the rich cinematography, the luscious use of the state’s ecological bounties, and its embankments of rural life on the edges of green forests. In the safe hands of director Avinash Arun, you are transported to this beguiling place of beauty that also, over time, raised a few beasts. The only issue is that the show for the longest part, struggles to make us care for the characters in these parts of the woods.

There are familiar faces — Nagesh Kukunoor as a local Naga leader, Tillotama Shome as the local police officer — and other unfamiliar ones, headlined by a terrific cold turn by Prashant Tamang. Political and familial histories converge with geographic acuity, but the show wobbles through the starting tracks because it simply can’t sell the external journey as much as it can easily sell the one undertaken by Hathi Ram’s conscience. His struggles to play police officer are matched by his inability to be a good husband and a respectable father. The failure feels all-encompassing and crushing at times. It explains his hammer-head approach to investigating, his uncontrolled tongue that propels our anger and disbelief at the cruelty of the world he navigates for us. A world whose rich, granular detail from the last season is replaced by a schematic parade of true crime tropes; a conflicted cop, a softer colleague, an exotic location, druglords, money, and depravity all kept down by the lid of co-option. It’s commendable but hardly path-breaking stuff.

To which effect, it’s when the series swerves back to observing Chaudhary’s bulky body and fraught mind as the compass for its motivations and hesitations, that the series regains its footing. This crooked but broken cop must make peace with so many demons in his life that every punch he manages to throw in the other direction feels miraculous. Not impossible, because Chaudhary’s ‘jaat-ness’ has ingrained in him a kind of violent streak; in one scene he refers to his father, passively at least, in the context of physical abuse. In another, he reacts to a friend’s little secret by declaring that he understands nothing about the idea of tenderness. Putting one brick over the other is the only way he knows how to build or live. It’s probably why he can’t steal but feels like a thief nonetheless, why he can’t lie but lives with the guilt of dishonesty, every waking day. In Ahlawat’s continued brilliance the show often finds both seer and saviour.

The second season flirts with banality at first, comes dangerously close to becoming ludicrously atonal and rediscovers its momentum by the mid-way point. The writing led by Sudip Sharma pulls through for the most part, but it can’t quite summon the depths that the first season touched, or much rather, pricked. To re-conjure that amount of shock must have been a tough ask — and one must assume the script has toned down for a variety of reasons — but there simply aren’t as many square pegs to evoke awe in the eye of the well-rounded narrative pegs. In terms of streaming standards, this second season is still better than most things we get to see, but as a follow-up to a visceral odyssey through the sewers of humanity, it doesn’t quite add up. It’s still slick, smart and superbly acted. Three things you’d give an arm for in this day and age of banal benevolence.

Paatal Lok - Season Two is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.