Director Ravindra Gautam’s non-linear style of story-telling makes Maharani Season 2 an interesting watch

Pick a state notorious for crime, religious bigotry, caste and over-ambitious leaders and you have got all the tools to play the game of seasons for a political drama, and yet it’s rare to see the successive seasons doing well and do better than the first.

Maharani 2

Director: Ravindra Gautam

Cast: Huma Qureshi, Amit Sial, Sohum Shah, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Vineet Kumar, Pramod Pathak, Kani Kusruti, Sushil Pandey, Anuja Sathe and Neha Chauhan

Rating: ***

So does our story with Rani Bharti, played by Huma Qureshi, a reluctant heroine who replaces her husband Bheema Bharti as the Chief Minister but manages the state of affairs better than her predecessor only to find her locking horns with her better half.

The first part had Maharani’s shaky start at the CM office and ended on a cliff-hanger. Much like the first part, director Ravindra Gautam allows the story to flow in a non-linear pattern, starting with a shocking revelation. Attention to dialogues and details make it engrossing from the word go. But as said Satyendranath Mishra (Pramod Pathak) for Bihar politics, “Jab jab aapko lagta hai ki aap Bihar ko samjh gaye, Bihar aapko jhatka deta hai” and it holds true for the series as well. You have to watch it to believe it. Full of surprises, one cannot get enough of the smallest of characters for who knows what bigger role they will play in the coming time.

The makers have time and again told us it is a fictional story, not based on any political party or individual, yet every fiction draws its strength from reality. If Shilpa Aggarwal rape case is the reminder of Shilpi Jain murder of 1999, then I-Act is a direct reference to the political consultancy firm I-Pac from where rose political strategists such as Prashant Kishor, not forgetting the Verma Commission and self-immolation acts of students reminding the dreadful times of the Mandal Commission. In other words, reality-meets-fiction is the very basis of Maharani’s storytelling. And when a secular like Navin Kumar becomes desperate to become the CM plays politics of religious identity, it shows how winning votes is not where the game of power ends, one has to commit bigger sins, plant conspirators well in advance to walk up to the oath ceremony.

When Kala Naag aka Gauri Shankar Panday, portrayed by Vineet Kumar, says, ‘Rajniti anubhav se chalti hai, data se nahi’, he is partially correct as it takes both anubhav and data to stand against Rani Bharti. And when it comes to anubhav (experience), Sohum Shah’s portrayal of Bheema manages to create an aura which is loved by the people and feared by the leaders. As a viewer one wants to see more of him, away from hospital bed and jailed quarters. Although shot in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, it doesn’t take away the essence of Bihar for the director breathes the state into the narrative addressing every issue it once faced, from ‘Jungle Raj’ to ‘alag’ Jharkhand. One only finds it hard to digest the creative liberty Rani’s character takes when she walks without security into the village of a student who dies because of her policy making or the concluding scene where she sabotages the oath-taking ceremony while addressing the conspirators. Perhaps where reality stops, fiction enters to fill in the gaps.

Rani carries herself as the Chief Minister with confidence, boldness and finesse and yet the writer remembers her shortcomings. In a scene where Rani asks her secretary Kaveri Sridharan (Kani Kusurti) about the meaning of semen and DNA test, it sure reveals her shortcomings as the state’s head but the director reminds us that an understanding leader rather than an educated one is what we need sometime.

Streaming on SonyLiv

— Sheetal