Paatal Lok 2 review: Sharp and searing, Jaideep Ahlawat-Sudip Sharma deliver one of the best shows of 2025

In the five years that have passed in the physical world, many things have changed, but many have remained the same. I’m happy to report that Paatal Lok redux, which sticks to its combination of a police procedural, the inner lives of its denizens, and compulsions of the outer world, is sharper and better.

This time around, the grungy outer Jamuna paar thana gives way to scenic hotspots in Nagaland. An important Naga participant, crucial to a trade conference which promises to boost development in the state, is brutally murdered in the Capital’s Nagaland sadan. Around the same time, a suspicious young woman is seen leaving the building. Drugs are involved. So is fat-cat businessman Reddy (Nagesh Kukunoor) whose business interests in the state are at odds with his potential partners, which include representatives of the remaining factions of those who have fought long for Nagaland’s interests.

The choice to move much of the action to this part of the country is fraught with difficulties. It can either swing into the exotic head-gear-wearing music-heavy zone, or into the one which toplines that ‘faintly alien place in which people with ‘chinki’ features eat smelly things’. The real win here is the show’s careful stance where the vexed outsider-insider debate gets space to breathe, over eight 45 minute episodes, as well as touch upon the complex history of the state with all its internecine struggles, and its neighbours, all very different from each other, but all muddled in most Indian heads as the generic ‘North-East’.

In one of the rare explanatory pieces in the show, a sequence is devoted to a senior cop asking Hathi Ram, ‘pataa hai Nagaland kahaan hai’, just so he can give him, and us, a little lecture. (What would he have said, you wonder, if it was set in adjacent Manipur, which has been aflame for the past two years?) Fortunately for all concerned, the plot gets back to examining these tensions, through the eyes of the local cops — Meghna Barua (Tillotama Shome) and her colleagues — and the citizens, without losing sight of its real purpose, making the howdunit as interesting as the whodunit.

ACP Imraan Ansari (Ishwak Singh), the greenhorn of the first season is now Hathi Ram Chaudhary’s senior. The latter has stayed where he was, driving his two-wheeler to work, and coming home to loving wife Renu (Gul Panag) whose desire for a better life is never in conflict with her loyalty. Anurag Arora, as the cocky cop who knows the importance of not rocking the boat, reprises his role, and is as effective. As is a plump policewoman (Nikita Grover) who is as adept at tracking CCTV footage as chatting about nutritious laddoos to be eaten during pregnancy.

Watch Paatal Lok 2 trailer here:

New locations deserve new faces, and the choice of performers who look home-grown helps. There are many: the junkie who kick-starts the chase (Merenla Imsong); Reddy’s well-coiffed wife, the cold-eyed assailant, the drug mafioso whose quest for a black tie doesn’t end well, the local cops who don’t like Hathi Ram and Ansari on their turf, the elderly Naga leader (Jahnu Barua) who knows more than he lets on, the dead man’s son (L C Sekhose, well-known rapper) stuck in the deadly power games underway: all add freshness and authenticity.

About the only element which feels superfluous and forced is the slice of tony South Delhi with its coke-head nightclub owners and their shady underlings. Also, because the show itself is a sprawling, dense affair, some of its threads feel not teased out enough. Shome’s character needed more to do, for instance: Barua’s portions with her six year old son are lovely, and you are left wanting more. One of the main characters drops out mid-way, making us miss their presence.

But, this is also a show which knows how to go for the jugular: its stakes are high, and if someone has to be sacrificed in the telling, so be it. Season one’s murkiness came from familiar tropes; this new season is a brave step up. A murder which is political, leading to an excavation of the politics of the place, through an intensely personal lens, is one of the ways to create memorable fiction, and the Avinash Arun-Sudip Sharma team knows how to do it.

The year has barely begun, and Paatal Lok 2 bids fair to be amongst the best of 2025.

Paatal Lok 2 cast: Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Gul Panag, Tillotama Shome, Anurag Arora, Nagesh Kukunoor, Jahnu Barua, Prashant Tamang, Merenla Imsong, L C Sekhose, Nikita Grover, Bodhisattva Sharma, Kenny Basumatary
Paatal Lok 2 director: Avinash Arun Dhaware
Paatal Lok 2 rating: 4 stars