CAST: Abir Chatterjee, Neeraj Kabi, Sanjay Suri, Aahana Kumra, Vijay Krishna, Mohan Agashe. Ananth Mahadevan,
DIRECTED BY: Raj Acharya.
The new season of Avrodh is an adaption of the book India’s Most Fearless 2 by Shiv Aroor & Rahul Singh. The season 1 of the showtackled the URI surgical strike. The season 2, with some recurring characters takes off in 2016 and the plot moves around the impact of demonetization on terrorism.
70 kgs of RDX has reached India and while the Income Tax department is looking at accounts of shell companies which have questionable money laundering transactions, the army intelligence is getting hints of an infiltration. How these two intels connect into meaningful information for the army to stop an orchestrated atttack by blasting 25 aircrafts in 25 Indian cities is the story of this 9 episode series of ~ 45 mins each.
Abir Chatterjee makes a very impressive debut in the hindi content space and in the most unassuming manner becomes a character you root for. As an Income Tax Officer who is also an army officer, we did find that denomination quite confusing, yet his chatacter is most endearingly real.
Vijay Krishna as Imtiaz is great but it seems he is added there in tokenism. Aahana Kumra in her special appearance is perfectly cast.
The story takes the front seat through the series. The reality of the conflict in Kashmir, the intermingling of drug routes across the border. Use of locals for carrying narcotics. Infiltration of the local splinter rebel groups across India for support through money and narcotics are all espionage methods deployed by Pakistan. The story woven around the mechanics of such an inflitration is a riveting and engrossing watch
The cinematography, the dialogues, the score rev up the tempo of the plot. Though, it depicts some real incidents that occured during that time, the story maintains its narrative hooks immensely well.
The surprise of the series was the suave, handsome Sanjay Suri , on screen after a long time. The problem we have with shows created in Kashmir is that most Kashmiri characters are not kashmiri actors. And this is despite the fact that the Indian television and film industry is full of Kashmiri actors who speak good kashmiri – from Anupam Kher, Sanjay Suri, Kunal Khemu. Kiran Kumar to top TV names like Hina Khan. Aly Goni, Shaheer Sheikh, Ekta Kaul.Aamir Bashir, Abrar Qazi.- shall we go on……….We need to see them.
Applause.please.
PS: The end of the show does justify the demonitization actions and the reasons from the Modi perspective but not sure if it is the version from the Government or just a figment of the writers’ imagination. It is not corroborated so we will refrain from making the review political.
