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Samantar 2 Web Series Review: Swwapnil Joshi & Nitish Bharadwaj’s dark fairy tale is destined to win hearts
Swwapnil Joshi, Nitish Bharadwaj, Sai Tamhankar and Tejaswini Pandit in a battle royal with time in the second season of this mythological thriller. Is it worth your time? Read Pinkvilla review.
Series Name: Samantar 2
Key Cast: Swwapnil Joshi, Nitish Bharadwaj, Tejaswini Pandit and Sai Tamhankar
Director: Sameer Vidwans
Streaming Platform: MX Player
Rating: 3.5/5
One person’s past is another's future. That’s the intriguing plot point of the Samantar franchise in a sentence. While the first season ended on a cliff hanger with Kumar Mahajan aka. Swwapnil Joshi, discovering that he is leading a life that, Sudarshan Chakrapani aka. Nitish Bharadwaj, once lived, the makers play upon the unique dimension of how no one can change their destiny under any circumstances. Without getting into the manner in which the story unfolds, this is an attempt from the makers to blend the mythological tale with romance, thrills and entangle it with the emotion of revenge.
While the first season was directed by Satish Rajwade, the second one has Sameer Vidwans on board, and he does manage to stay true to not just the world of Suhas Shirwalkar’s novel, but also the premise set up by Satish in the earlier installment. However, the only drawback on the direction front rests in the fact that the filmmaker resorts to too many flashback sequences. It tampers the pace leading to repetition of scenes and does nothing but adds on to the run-time. In the fast moving digital world, the audience is sharp enough to pick on even the complex instances that have been shown earlier in the narrative and one doesn't need to emphasize on that with flashbacks.
This season starts off with a bang, as the first four episodes move at a razor-sharp speed, setting up the conflict, however, the narrative slows down in the coming three episodes, before finally picking up again from towards the end of seventh episode. The pace of Samantar goes up and down, but it’s eventually the final three episodes that keeps the interest intact and the season concludes with a bang, making us wonder if there's a third season in the pipeline. While the editing could have been crisper, with the team attempting to end it in seven to eight episodes, much like the first season, we see an obvious upgrade in production values. The cinematography is rich, and one can also see the attention that the makers have put in to design the night sequences through the narrative.
The dialogues are fantastic, so is the background score, which does its work of creating an ambience of intrigue. If one thought Swwapnil Joshi was good in Samantar, he goes a notch above that person in season two. His portrayal of Kumar Mahajan is a lot more complex, exploring the darker side of him as an actor, going violent and unpredictable by knowing the future a day in advance. He lives through the character and delivers a performance that would stay with him for life. Nitish Bharadwaj is calm as a cucumber even in the most intense scenes of the season. He is restrained as the character demands him to be, and leaves a mark. Tejaswini Pandit as Kumar’s wife, Nima, fights her emotional battles, and puts up a sincere performance. In her dual role of Sundara and Meera, Sai Tamhankar hits it out of the park. She carries the aura and glamour with dignity and there rests an underlying element of intrigue that she imbibes in her personality.
All said and done, the flaws aside, Samantar 2 is a fitting follow up to the first season, and it's destined to win hearts. It’s ideally a dark fairy tale rooted in the Indian mythology, and it wouldn’t be a wrong idea for someone to explore the same concept in the lighter space too, as the premise has the potential to be narrated in multiple formats. While the series has been released in Pan-India languages including Hindi, we would recommend the viewers to watch it in Marathi with English Subtitles, as that’s where the real essence of Kumar Mahajan’s tale is captured.
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