‘Paatal Lok’ Season 2 series review: Jaideep Ahlawat keeps the show on the road

Jaideep Ahlawat in ‘Paatal Lok’ Season 2

Reunions are always bittersweet. And then there is Sudip Sharma’s idea of a reunion. In the new season of Paatal Lok, Hathi Ram Chaudhary (Jaideep Ahlawat) first catches sight of his old pal Ansari (Ishwak Singh) at a morgue. Ansari was once his junior at their inconsequential Outer Jamna Paar police station. Now, though, as a hotshot IPS officer working the big cases, he commands respect. Hathi Ram stands off and stares, resisting contact. A team-up is imminent, but the morbidity of the setting makes it poignant.

The Hathi Ram-Ansari friendship is our anchor in Season 2. Created by Sudip Sharma, the first season of Prime Video’s crime series was a pandemic hit—a grim, coruscating procedural, kaleidoscopic in its scale and scope, picking up hot-button topics like caste violence and Islamophobia. The second season is subtler and less combative, subduing commentary in favour of human relations. At times, it becomes a touching meditation on male bonds. When Hathi Ram’s name comes up during a briefing, Ansari corrects his higher-up that he is not an ‘SHO’, just an ordinary inspector. He isn’t being cruel or conceited, just realistic about their differing vantage points.

The new season opens with death. Jonathan Thom (Kaguirong Gonmei), an influential Naga leader, is found brutally murdered in Delhi—a headless corpse in a tub. Thom’s shocking decapitation imperils talks for a proposed trade summit in the northeastern State. The police send out a lookout notice for Rose Lizo (Merenla Imsong), a mysterious young woman caught on camera fleeing the crime scene. Hathi Ram, overcoming his initial diffidence, approaches Ansari with a lead: Rose has skipped town.

The first two episodes are where Sharma, director-cinematographer Avinash Arun and their actors are in total control. We catch up with some familiar faces: Gul Panag as Hathi Ram’s homebound wife, say, or Nikita Grover as serene lady constable Manju. The pace picks up with Hathi Ram infiltrating—in his own lumbering way—a warehouse where drugs are being packed. As in the first season, a complex picture begins to form, and Hathi Ram and Ansari soon decamp to Dimapur, Nagaland, following the trail of Rose.

Sharma’s previous series, the terrific Kohrra, did not have much overt politics but was consistently engrossing. It was a Punjab pastoral, tying ideas of masculinity and property to the State’s chequered past. The Nagaland of Paatal Lok is vaguely summoned, with much exposition and lip service. We hear of growth promises, and former insurgents giving up arms. Tillotama Shome plays a police superintendent named Meghna Barua—Nagamese, a creole language, has Assamese and Bengali influences, and Shome is Bengali. Sharma and his co-writers keep the basic engine of the plot humming. This is a thoroughly competent series, well-paced and performed, although competence, in 2025, is strictly a threshold praise.

Jaideep Ahlawat turns in another great, glum performance as Hathi Ram. The hard-bitten Haryanvi cop has a dense moustache and a wider paunch this time around; yet he darts like the wind, sliding down roofs and knocking out assailants with a single, definitive blow of his helmet. There are comic touches in Ahlawat’s careworn gait: there is a priceless moment when Ansari is on the phone with his mysterious “girlfriend”, and Hathi Ram leans in to listen. I wish Alhawat was around in Hollywood in the 60s and 70s, when Sam Peckinpah was making his great Westerns—his pockmarked presence deserves a canvas that untamed.

Nagesh Kukunoor, soft-toned and sinister, is excellent as a shadowy bureaucrat—he seems styled after Kapil Dev and the writer Pankaj Mishra. There is another fine, inscrutable cameo by veteran Assamese director Jahnu Barua. At eight episodes of around 45 minutes each, this is a leaner—though not necessarily meaner—Paatal Lok. Sharma works in some resonance, finding ways to talk about the migrant crisis and soaring unemployment. The criticism is carefully rationed out. The first season was a hammer blow. This is a slap on the wrist.

Paatal Lok Season 2 is streaming on Prime Video