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Police procedurals are not so common on the Indian web, and good police procedurals even rarer. Kohrra 2 is a vast improvement over its Season 1, with only one common character, sub-inspector Garundi (Barun Sobti). This time, in a Punjab village named Dalerpura, an NRI girl named Priti (Pooja Bhamrrah) is found murdered in a barn that belongs to her brother, Baljinder (Anurag Arora).
In comes Dhanwant Kaur (Mona Singh), a tough cop with a backstory. Garundi is no less hampered psychologically by his own trauma (a poser from me: why do ace cops, detectives and espionage agents almost always have traumatic backstories, I wonder!!) and the two gradually and almost reluctantly settle as a team.
In that village, they go through a mist (hence the synonymous title) of characters, motives, suspicions and red herrings to finally zero in on a case that also includes repayment of loans, a couple of affairs, reels and social media influencers, family grudges and property disputes, labor issues and above all, the overriding (for many characters) emotion of guilt that surfaces along with blood and deaths on the way.
The denouement is logical even as it comes after we go through a purging of the human psyche of most characters in the film and dig through layers of character-driven complexities, and social ills like persistent patriarchy even in this day and age.
Through all this, we get a canny account of how the law functions and its own limitations and strengths.
The series (only six episodes) is certainly not action-packed or furiously-paced, but is a relaxed yet not languorous saga of a complex series of events in a quiet village with family politics taking centerstage.
It is lifted by expert performances from Mona Singh: the lady sure is chameleonic in the array of roles she has being doing off-late across the board, as in Border 2, Subedaar (as a negative character—I have watched only the trailer as of now), Mistry, The Ba***ds of Bollywood, Thode Door Thode Paas and even dazzling in the otherwise abominable Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos.
Complementing her to perfection is the intense owner of truly penetrating eyes, Barun Sobti, whose performance is as piercing. Muskan Arora as his wife, Silky is excellent. Anurag Arora as Baljinder, Preet’s brother, Vikhyat Gulati as Johnny Malang, Prayrak Mehta as the young guy desperately searching for his father, Ekta Sodhi as Rajji, Sidharth Bhardwaj as SHO Aseem Khatri, Jasvir Kumar as the watchman with his own story, Rana Ranbir as Raju Sirda, are all good to excellent, with a special mention needed of Pradhuman Singh Mall as Dhanwant’s husband and Mandeep Ghai as Twinkle Atwal, Baljinder’s wife.
All the other actors score in this immensely well-scripted (Gunjit Chopra, Sudip Sharma—the original creator—and Diggi Sisodia) and directed (Faisal Rahman and Sudip Sharma) series, which is the only current bright spot in a paucity of watch-worthy web series. The technical side keeps pace with the moods and needs of the story, and the music by Naren Chandavarkar and Benedict Taylor is superbly nuanced.
All in all, the show that is a pleasant surprise after the inconsistent first season.
Rating: ***1/2
Netflix presents Clean Slate Filmz’ Kohraa 2 Created by: Sudip Sharma Produced by: Rohit Jaiswal Directed by: Faisal Rahman and Sudip Sharma Written by: Gunjit Chopra, Sudip Sharma & Diggi Sisodia Music: Naren Chandavrakar & Benedict Taylor Starring: Mona Singh, Barun Sobti, Anurag Arora, Pooja Bhamrrah, Muskan Arora, Siddharth Bhardwaj, Vikhyat Gulati, Prayrak Mehta, Ekta Sodhi as Rajji, Jasvir Kumar, Rana Ranbir, Pradhuman Singh Mall, Mandeep Ghai & others
