Full marks to Family man

Full marks to Family Man: My quick take on Manoj Bajpai’s ‘Family Man S2’

This season 2 ticks all the boxes we generally look for. It's better than season 1, the production quality is much better so is the performances and above all the plot. The very fact that we spent the entire Jumma binge-watching this series is a good enough testimony that this 9 episode long series has enough ‘hook’ points which makes you a couch potato for the day.

What I loved about the series is its main character Srikant Tiwari who is an unassuming undercover agent, who is as clumsy as Inspector Clouseau sometimes while as sharp as Holmes otherwise. Unlike the stereotypical Tigers and 007s who are generally shown as an alpha male, this Srikant is a typical middle-class‘ family guy’ who is undergoing his own ‘mid-life crisis. His Dr. Watson is played by lovely and lively Sharib Hashmi. Though the series belongs to Manoj Bajpai who is our Srikant Tiwari this season's limelight is ‘hogged’ by its main antagonist played by Samantha Akkineni. She has done her role of a lifetime, her cold-blooded assassin avatar is simply hypnotic, her body language, her simmering anger, her professional class hand-to-hand combat skills is simply wow.

Season 1 dealt with terrorist issues from the Western front while this season 2 has gone south and has dealt with a deadly nexus of LTTE joining hands with rouge Pakistani agents. Looks like S3 is going eastwards showcasing problems from eastern borders.

The delay in releasing this season 2 was of course a fall out of flak received by Amazon post-Tandav fiasco. I am sure they had to ‘de-sensitize the script and weed out many ‘could be’ controversial issues, maybe they had to edit a lot of footage, this is visible in the final product as it has become a bit tardy and seems overstretched for almost 5-6 episodes. For eg, the PM of India is shown as Mrs. Basu (Bengali woman), but this Lady is without a white saree and trademark slippers 😜. However, the final 3-4 episodes are so pacy that it makes you forget about the slow pace of the first half of the series. For a change, the action scenes are very well choreographed, and I would like to commend the casting director for hand-picking south Indian actors for Jaffna sympathizers roles, I also loved that they kept the conversation in native languages which added authenticity to the plot.

The only thing which I did not like was the way the teenager's role/character is developed in the plot maybe I am a bit old to see a preteen girl acting like and speaking like a grown-up adult. Overall the series is a must-watch if a) you have watched Season 1 b) you like thrillers c) watch it for an effortless acting of Samantha Akkineni. ( In fact after her damn performance I did realise today that I had seen her opposite Fahad Fasil in Super Delux earlier)