Freedom At Midnight Season 2 review: Serious but not heavy, 2026 already delivers one of its best series

Take a bow, Nikkhil Advani and team, as well as the fine ensemble cast, spearheaded ably by Sidhant Gupta, Chirag Vohra and Rajendra Chawla playing, respectively, Nehru, Gandhi and Patel, with terrific support from Arif Zakaria and KC Shankar as Mohammad Ali Jinnah and VP Menon, and with Luke McGibney and Cordelia Bugeja as the Mountbatten couple as equally important participants.

Some of the niggles of the first season have been ironed out: in several scenes, the overwhelming presence of the background music recedes, letting us experience the moment without distraction; Vohra’s sing-song lilt is not as pronounced — or maybe I’ve got used to it — and through the jousting between the principal characters, we get glimpses of their human side. Yes, these were great men (and women), but they were also fallible.

The Partition and its consequent displacement of millions of people on the basis of religion, on the back of an adamant Mohammad Ali Jinnah whose demand of a separate nation for Muslims, led to the riots that broke out on the borders drawn by the departing British. This led to the culmination of the freedom struggle with the birth of our nation, the dream of thousands of men and women: this powerfully moving part two of the Sony Liv series, gives us the backstory — several backstories — of one of the most striking freedom struggles, freeing us from colonial rule.

At the end of season one, we were left on the cusp of possible breakthroughs, and this is where Season 2 starts from. Lord Mountbatten instructs Radcliffe to draw the lines on the map, which would lead to the knotty, almost-impossible division — how do you divide land and properties — and most heart-breakingly, how do you divide humans, who had lived together for centuries?

That’s what the British did, they divided so they could rule, and that’s what they did, when they left, with Hindus and Muslims arrayed against each other, with the dying Jinnah digging in his heels, even as Gandhi removed himself from the proceedings, as someone who stood against any divide amongst people. What follows is a well-crafted sequence of events — clearly cherry picked for brevity as well as keeping current sentiments in mind — of those last few months before the Partition, which led to the carving out of the two countries.

Harrowing scenes of the massacres on trains carrying refugees. Rioting in Calcutta, with mounting deaths, even if you can sense a choice of not labelling the perpetrators from the Hindu majority side as clearly, with Gandhi-the-adamant-peacenik brokering a heavy peace. The thread with the crafty Patel and the inflappable Menon teaming up to get the reluctant rajwadas to fall in line is infused with a lighter touch– a nawab running away with his beloved dogs makes you smile.

Kashmir gets a whole chapter to itself, as it should, with then ruler Maharaja Hari Singh playing both sides until he got to the point of no-return when he had to sign on with India (his overtures to Jinnah reportedly didn’t find fruition), even as Patel declares himself unhappy with Nehru — goaded on by Mountbatten to stick with the principles of ‘fairness and impartiality’ — getting the UN in for arbitration. Statehood, identity and faith were all at stake, and the decisions taken then live with us today.

Also Read – The Raja Saab movie review: An affable Prabhas gets lost in a giant, spiralling mess

The series does well to underline the rising problems between Nehru and Patel, the two men burying their differences only with Gandhi’s fast-unto-death. Would they have kissed and made up if their hands weren’t forced? It’s fascinating to speculate whether we would have had a different nation had events not rolled out the way they did, with the assassination of the Mahatma, in which a lesser-known conspirator is given a lot of space, with the actual assassin Godse confined to just a flash. Was this again a voluntary choice, or a pragmatic decision?

I was riveted by this season of Freedom At Midnight, which manages to sustain its tone– as serious as befits the subject without getting all heavy about it, lacing it with a degree of levity– and it will be one of my favorites this year, which has just about begun.

Freedom At Midnight 2 cast: Sidhant Gupta, Chirag Vohra, Rajendra Chawla, Luke McGibney, Cordelia Bugeja, Arif Zakaria, Ira Dubey, KC Shankar, Rajesh Kumar
Freedom At Midnight 2 director: Nikkhil Advani
Freedom At Midnight 2 rating: 3.5 stars