Dupahiya Season 2 Review: More Chaos, Fewer Laughs

Dupahiya 2 Brings Chaos, Fewer Laughs

BOTTOM LINE
More Chaos, Fewer Laughs

PLATFORM
Amazon Prime Video

RUNTIME
5 Hrs, 12 Mins [8 Episodes]

What Is the Show About?

Dhadakpur erupts when a mobile tower is set to be built on Banwari’s field, sparking panic. His son Bhugol grows popular as an influencer, while his daughter Roshni feels the pressure ahead of the gruelling SSC exam, just a week away. Her ex Amavas offers her a shortcut with pure intentions, while local inspector Mithlesh investigates a scam.

Performances

The performances are decent, though the characters don’t make much progress. The pivotal cast – Gajraj Rao, Renuka Shahane, Sparsh Shrivastava and Shivani Raghuvanshi – do the needful, but aren’t quite tested and their portrayals hardly offer anything new. Yashpal Sharma’s cop act deserved better writing. Bhuvan Arora is strictly okay. Anjuman Saxena’s presence offers rare instances of warmth.

Analysis

Amazon Prime’s rural comedy Dupahiya, while set in the same world as TVF’s Panchayat, unfolds in Bihar’s Dhadakpur, operating at a higher pitch. No outsider comes to save the locals here, but their realities are far from rosy. Yet that doesn’t stop them from dreaming big.

The show, which earlier revolved around a wedding, a lost bike and a panchayat election, is back with a new season. The key characters and their ambitions remain unchanged, but they have newer problems to face – a mobile tower to be constructed on a piece of land and a paper-leak scam.

Banwari Jha loses his job after calling off his daughter Roshni’s marriage to a bureaucrat’s son. Roshni makes little progress in her quest for a government job. Her ex Amavas still hopes for a chance to reunite with her. Her brother Bhugol, who impersonates a female dancer on social media, dreams of a career in films.

Pushpalata Yadav, the panchayat president, tries her best to be a do-gooder while moral policing her ambitious daughter. The mayhem kicks off with the proposal to construct a new mobile tower on Banwari’s land, amid Roshni’s desperation for a government job.

Set over the course of a week, the show takes its own sweet time to reintroduce the oddities of a village that remains blissfully ignorant, backward and superstitious. A rumour about the health risks of mobile tower construction spreads like wildfire, triggering a protest.

The creators try to elicit humour from the growing tension between Banwari and the locals over the tower, inviting needless confusion. This coincides with a cop’s quest to expose the harsh reality behind the paper leak.

A story about a paper leak in a year that has witnessed massive protests over corruption in the education sector is as timely as it gets. However, Dupahiya Season 2 lacks the sensitivity to tackle it, reducing it to a formulaic conflict from which the protagonists escape scot-free. It feels tone-deaf at various levels.

Beyond the bigger issues, the personal concerns never hit home either. Character evolution is minimal. Roshni, instead of marriage, has a new problem. Bhugol continues to make a cute fool of himself. Nirmal, Pushpalata’s rebellious daughter who nearly falls in love, has nothing substantial to add this time.

Even with Mithlesh, the humiliated cop committed to unravelling the truth, you wish the show gave more weight to his frustrations instead of the couple of scenes that feel like a formality.

Dupahiya Season 2 is so chaotic and busy with plot mechanics that it has hardly anything new to say or, at the very least, to entertain. It milks the goodwill around its colourful characters to sell newer jokes. When creators repeatedly feed viewers the same idea of an Indian village, show after show, the cliché risks being interpreted as reality.

In retrospect, the first season had greater charm and innocence, a by-product of the unpredictability around its characters. Even if it was built on stereotypes and stock characters, there was ample entertainment to make up for its problems.

Dupahiya Season 2 is an underwhelming season devoid of the innocence, wit and wackiness of its predecessor. The characters remain stagnant and the laughs are fewer. While there’s more noise, mayhem and a bigger systemic issue, by the end everything feels too absurd and pointless.

Music and Other Departments?

In terms of musical value, the show boasts nothing special. At times the soundscape goes a bit too far in trying to be quirky. The cinematography is alright, aesthetic on a surface level, without adding any distinctive value. The production design stays true to the setting. The writing lacks substance to justify its five-hour runtime.

Highlights?

Initial episodes (1-3)

Bhugol’s track (even if repetitive)

Timeliness of the paper-leak subplot

Drawbacks?

Misses the magic of the first season

Uneven writing, lacks substance

Minimal character progress

Did I Enjoy It?

Only in the early segments. It starts well but loses steam quickly.

Will You Recommend It?

If you don’t compare it with the first season, or better

Dupahiya Season 2 Series Reviewed by M9 News