In the first episode, there’s a scene where Ganesh Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) is stranded on a boat in the middle of a sea.
He doesn’t know where he is and sits around helplessly trying to locate a shore but to no avail.
He’s completely baffled and annoyed, and that’s how one feels when watching the much-awaited second season of screen adaptation of Vikram Chandra’s novel Sacred Games. The first season was a gripping, witty and dark tale of a gangster and a failed cop.
The show quickly became a hit not only because of the wry humour but also because the fast pace of storytelling.
There were nuances that the characters brought to the table. Unfortunately, for all the prior hype, the ensemble cast in the current run seems rather complacent.
There seems to be a lack of effort or failure to bring newness to the characters which became iconic after the first season was aired.
One would think that the addition of Kalki Koechlin and Ranvir Shorey would dazzle up the screen but both the actors as well as Saif Ali Khan are rather forgettable as the episodes wrap up.
The second season takes off right where the first ended, with Inspector Sartaj Singh (Saif Ali Khan) trailing off on a goods train.
The eight episodes span from 1994 to 2017 revealing much about Gaitonde’s life. He finally meets Guruji (Pankaj Tripathi) in this season, who for some reason is a typecast straight out of Netflix’s documentary on Osho, Wild Wild Country.
There’s nothing new or remarkable about Guruji and it’s this predictability that makes this season seem so utterly boring. The first season was shot with Gaitonde’s voiceover, the second season has Guruji’s voice as well.
There is a lot of talking and it’s a bit annoying to be explained everything and to watch episodes with dual commentary.
The one revelation in this season was RAW agent Madam Yadav (Amruta Subhas) who does a fabulous job with her deadpan face. Her performance is perhaps the only one that truly stood out through the entire season.
Of course, there are more seasons in the pipeline, but we are not sure how enthusiastic we’ll be to binge-watch given the show’s detachment from the original material.