Rocket Boys 2 review: Jim Sarbh, Ishwak Singh series nails its second coming

We were introduced to the visionary scientists who shaped India’s nuclear-space programme Homi J Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai, played by Jim Sarbh and Ishwak Singh respectively, in the first part of the series. The second, also directed by Abhay Pannu, reunites us with the two main leads and their ladies (Saba Azad as Pipsy Irani and Regina Cassandra as Mrinalini Sarabhai, both very good, but the latter is given more space to shine), and the portions which has their interactions front and centre are the best parts of the series. Maintaining the right balance between zeroing in on the personal, intimate moments and zooming out to the big story is always tricky, and Pannu has that aspect nailed.

Rocket Boys Season 2 trailer:

What doesn’t work as well are the bits in which a CIA spy ( Namit Das) and a trusted Bhabha colleague are shown conspiring darkly, and being spied upon in turn by a fast-unravelling figure of the fictional Raza Mehdi (Dibyendu Bhattacharya), once a bitter Bhabha rival, now a fellow-traveller. It doesn’t help that the CIA bunch continue to act like cut-rate villains torturing hapless types to divulge details about the top-secret India’s nuclear programme, and then falling back to hand-wringing. ‘Iss bomb ko rokne ke liye hum 15 saal se kaam kar rahe thay,’ yells an enraged CIA stooge, even as the Buddha smiles successfully.

Rocket Boys 2 is also successful in creating the connections between political patronage and the advancement of the space programme. While Nehru (Rajit Kapur) is alive, he talks about being able to continue doing the good work begun in his time; after his death, we are shown his daughter Indira (Charu Shankar, making a mark), going from a naive submissive Indu to an assertive, authoritative Indira, who learns how to overcome dissent from within her own party and an obdurate Morarji Desai and his followers, but who is smart enough to know when to back her father’s ‘mad scientists’.

It was an era when politicians could overcome their personal egos and work in tandem for national good, and Rocket Boys 2 reminds us of that time when the crucial support for scientific temperament helped make India’s ambitious space programme a reality. A P J Abdul Kalam (Arjun Radakrishnan) gets solo time almost near the end of the series to push the button on the most ambitious of them all, the nuclear bomb in Pokharan. You can feel the ripples going out into the world.

How much did the untimely death of Nehru derail things? Were the mysterious deaths of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Homi J Bhabha, and, to an extent, Vikram Sarabhai, connected to their closeness to the nuclear programme? The series, which again, like last time, uses fictional flourishes to buttress its story, does make those connections, and we are left wondering. Even as those truths may stay interred, these were the visionaries whose legacies shaped the beginnings of a modern India.

Like last time, the performances and the production values are top notch, especially from Sarbh and Singh. No surprise then that the series is the most vibrant when the camera is trained on the original rocket boy duo, imperfect men who never let their weaknesses distract from their vision– the flamboyant Bhabha, always the man with a plan, and Sarabhai, the milder of the two only on surface, adamant about using the space programme to further the cause of education and progress– laser-focussed on their jobs even as they stray and return to their women, dissolving mutual differences while creating lasting institutions, and staying the course which made India soar.

Rocket Boys 2 cast: Jim Sarbh, Ishwak Singh, Saba Azad, Regina Cassandra, Namit Das, Dibyendu Bhattacharya
Rocket Boys 2 director: Abhay Pannu