The Family Man's second season released on June 4th and since my family and I really enjoyed Season 1, we pretty much binged it today in one sitting!
So, here is a quick review:
Things I Liked:
1. The Family Man is an action-packed, espionage thriller series. Season 1 introduced us to the team members of TASC- an elite team within one of India's intelligence agencies. The team's job is to monitor and assess threats to national security as well as neutralise these threats. The leader of this rag-tag team is Srikant Tiwari aka Sri (played with a brilliant mix of wit, gravitas and vulnerability by Manoj Bajpayee), who is our family man with a wife (played so beautifully by Priyamani) and two bratty-cute-smartass kids. He tries to keep his work life as a spy completely separate from his life as a regular, easy-going family man. So, each season focuses on the impending threat to the country as well as an exploration of Sri's family life- his wife- Suchi's- struggles being a working mom and (pretty much) single parent, his precocious teenaged daughter seeing through their conflict and pulling away from the family etc. The show is a nice of mix of the mundane and the outrageously scary.
2. The show is slick and fast-paced with multiple events happening in the same episode. Never a dull moment. This season's focus was on an ex-LTTE team in Chennai teaming up with some not-so-nice people from our lovely neighbours to the west and planning on killing the PMs of India and Sri Lanka. So, we get to see some of the angst and trauma of Raji- played so maturely and beautifully by Samantha Akkineni- and I wish the series had had the time to delve a little more into the Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka and the genesis of the LTTE etc. However, the show did delve quickly into these issues and I was quite surprised to see a non-judgemental stance taken by the TASC team who subscribe to the belief that one man's revolutionary is another man's terrorist.
3. The battle between Team TASC and Team Raji is intense with many ups and downs. We lose some good men and women on both sides and the show is a nail-biter almost to the very end. The pace doesn't let up even for a moment, which makes the show really engaging.
4. The show has some very strong performances from the leads as well as from the supporting cast. Sharib Hashmi as the inimitable JK Talpade was hilarious! Even the TASC team members in Chennai, the LTTE-esque team working with Raji were all very, very good in their roles!
Things I Didn't Like: Nothing major. Just that season 1 was extra sweet because there were so many of Sri-Suchi and the kids' moments. This season we didn't get much of that, which makes sense given the story, but it was an element that I missed.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
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