The novelty factor in the first season of Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein was that a woman lusted after a man, instead of the other way round. With the power of her gangster father behind her, she could even terrorise him into ditching his girlfriend and marrying her. He tried to find fool-proof methods of killing her, but was shocked to discover that the hitman wanted a large sum not to send her back. The freaky twist paved the way for the Netflix show’s second season, which, like the first, opens with a line from Shakespeare: “the course of true love never did run smooth”.
This time, it runs with all the convolutions of a video game. Vikrant (Tahir Raj Bhasin) is between a rock and a hard place. He’s crazed enough in his hatred of his wife Purva (Anchal Singh) to bomb a theatre to kill her, never mind how many others die in the bargain. He’s processing the news that his girlfriend Shikha (Shweta Tripathi) is marrying Akhil (Nikhil Pandey) – who can’t tell the difference between blood and sindoor.
Purva’s captor Jalan (Arunoday Singh) demands a huge ransom. The online lessons in weeping that Vikrant took in the previous season go waste. His evil father-in-law Akheraj (Saurabh Shukla) has the money and manpower to hunt down the kidnapper, so Vikrant has to use all his wits to prevent Purva’s return.
Akheraj’s hire Guru (Gurmeet Choudhary) arrives with six-pack abs, two superefficient teammates, surveillance equipment and an arsenal of weapons. If Vikrant now looks permanently terrified, it is because he has the hounds of hell after him.
Director Sidharth Sengupta, along with co-writer Umesh Padalkar, cooks up a complicated plot and then leaves it to simmer until it chars. The six-part series piles on the complications and ups the odds for all players. It would have been hilariously noir if it wasn’t for the gross-out violence. Normal people would have turned green around the gills at the sight of a chopped-up body or a head in a bag, but everyone in the show appears calm.
In all the intermittently entertaining pulp fiction elements, the previously unhinged Purva comes off as heroic, while Vikrant is so hapless that he becomes sympathetic. “Observe two minutes of silence, for my luck,” Vikrant whines. (The dialogue is by Varun Badola).
Anyone who can run down a hill with blindfolded eyes and tied hands deserves applause. Jalan and his crew don’t know what has hit them.
Despite being an unlikely leading man, Tahir Raj Bhasin plays his part sportingly, looking like he doesn’t mind coming off as a loser. Shweta Tripathi doesn’t have much to do, but carries off tense sequences with ease.
Since Purva isn’t a traditional femme fatale, Anchal Singh ably balances Purva’s wickedness with the courage written for her character. Some threads are left loose for a possible third season, but it would require an even more febrile imagination to top this level of deliriousness.
