In the 2023 Hindi streaming series Taaza Khabar, a toilet attendant’s fortunes were transformed by a divine gift of being able to see events before they happened. Receiving the advance warnings as notifications on his phone, Vasant went from slumdog to top dog overnight.
Every rise has a fall. This barely-true maxim that creators swear by affected Vasant too. At the end of the season, he had dented a gangster’s wealth, annoyed his friends and received the notification to end all notifications: news of his own death.
Season two has returned to Disney+ Hotstar with the same pointlessness that greets the question “Did Vasant really die?” Written by Aziz Dalal, Hussain Dalal and Abbas Dalal and directed by Himank Gaur, Taaza Khabar’s new outing reeks of staleness and the unshakeable feeling of luck having run out.
A very-much-alive Vasant (Bhuvan Bam) spends six wearying episodes trying to pay off the underworld don Yusuf (Jaaved Jafferi). To make a gargantuan demand even gargantuaner, Yusuf keeps upping Vasant’s debt – 100 crore! 500 crore! 1,000 crore! – just for the fun of it.
Vasant is also kept busy repairing his ties with his parents (Vijay Nikam and Atisha Naik) and patching up with his former girlfriend Madhu (Shriya Pilgaonkar). Vasant’s loyal friends Peter (Prathamesh Parab) and Mehboob (Deven Bhojani) help Vasant carry off daft schemes to pay back Yusuf, who keeps threatening carnage but rarely acts on it.
The new characters include the politician Smita (Gauri Pradhan Tejwani), who by showing Yusuf his place only reinforces his bluster. The talented Jaaved Jafferi is wasted as the borderline farcical Yusuf, just as the rest of the cast has little new to offer.
There’s at least one gem in the profanity-riddled, excrement-obsessed dialogue. We will pay you back in instalments, Vasant’s working-class parents earnestly tell Yusuf.
“Nobody lets me die in peace!” Vasant declares. The show lacks the irony that surely hangs over some of the plot developments, especially Vasant’s conduct. Besides, can a phone bound by a spell actually update its software?
The entire second season could have been crunched into a couple of episodes and tacked onto the previous edition. This is one notification that everybody missed.
