Maamla Legal Hai Season 2 Review: Legal Drama Never Gets Going

BOTTOM LINE
Legal Drama Never Gets Going

PLATFORM
NETFLIX

RUNTIME
4Hrs 30Mins (8 Episodes)

What Is the Film About?

In the busy Patparganj District Court, Judge V D Tyagi and a team of lawyers handle a variety of strange cases. While Tyagi navigates courtroom politics to secure his career, his colleagues deal with everything from bizarre neighbourhood disputes to serious legal battles. The staff go about their duty with a pinch of salt, finding creative, often unconventional ways to deliver justice in a chaotic system.

Performances

Ravi Kishan remains relatively underutilised this time. While he’s good at expressing Tyagi’s internal conflicts toward the final episodes, this isn’t among his best works. Anant V. Joshi’s lively screen presence stays with you long after the show ends. Naila Grrewal carries the high-society poise effectively, much like the earlier season, though there’s hardly any substantial character progression.

Anjum Batra and Nidhi Bisht do a better job of bringing their characters’ core personas into their performances. Dinesh Lal Yadav’s presence barely ensures any laughs. Kusha Kapila’s presence appears wasted, though the other new entrant, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, fares way better as Kailash Shubhkela.

Analysis

Maamla Legal Hai is a show that’s hard to slot under a genre, even though it broadly falls in the legal drama space. It is neither a full-fledged comedy nor a hard-hitting courtroom saga. For lack of a better reference point, it’s a quirky, low-stakes version of the Jolly LLB franchise. The protagonists remain underdogs but boast integrity, even if dealing with unusual cases, petty tussles, and moral dilemmas every day.

Across two seasons, the show operates among the same bunch of characters, while the cases, internal conflicts, and their positions change from time to time. Yet, it is difficult to understand who exactly the target audience is. The series banks on its sleepy small-town setting and unusual realities for humour, while peppering it with judicial jargon catered to legal enthusiasts.

Tyagi, Sujata Negi, Ananya, and Mintu, regardless of their positions, are ordinary, flawed people who are relatable, but the show doesn’t know what to do with them and finds strange excuses to stretch episodes. The first one, for instance, is all about Tyagi mispronouncing a word during his oath (as a judge) and a senior judge asking him to redo it. The former doesn’t budge, and a petty conflict is needlessly stretched.

Like the first season, there’s a fight for the order of the names on the firm’s nameplate, this time among Tyagi’s former associates. A man takes to the court to fight a case against a deodorant brand that burns his underarms and mispronounces ‘sexiest’ as ‘sexist.’ Another man files a sexual harassment case against his landlady, where the systemic constraints around male victims come to the fore.

A maid suspiciously comes forward to donate her kidney to an elderly woman and seeks legal clearance. A divorce case has a strict mother-in-law engaging in bitter banter with the daughter-in-law’s brother, where the wife asks her timid husband to sing ‘Mera dil bhi kitna pagal hai’ amidst the drama. Meanwhile, Ananya feels guilty about being partly responsible for Vishwas’s failed engagement.

A lot is happening throughout the show, but you hardly care for any of the events; none of them is fleshed out seriously enough, and what’s passed off as humour leaves you with mixed feelings. The better part of the second season revolves around Tyagi’s struggles as a judge with detachment, how he misses being a lawyer, the guilt of pronouncing verdicts, and the brewing romance between Mintu and Sujata, without revealing their identities.

The regular conversations between Tyagi and Kailash Shubhkela on the terrace offer humane insights into the characters, but none of this lasts long. One also expected a stronger legal fight between Ananya and her arch-rival Nayana (a new character this season, played by Kusha Kapila), but the resolution is barely convincing. The entire ‘sting operation’ fiasco at the manufacturing unit is such an old-fashioned farce.

Maamla Legal Hai has all the ingredients to be a better show. It just struggles to invest its energies in the right areas. There’s father-son drama, a middle-aged couple romance on a dating app, moral/ethical dilemmas, and a satirical look at a broken system. Yet, it’s a pity that the proceedings feel so aimless and juvenile. The creators had capable actors at their helm, a relatable setup, and an OTT giant with a guaranteed viewership; there’s honestly no excuse to justify the mediocrity.

Music and Other Departments?

Nilotpal Bora’s background score remains functional at best, though the smart nods to 90s songs add some vigour to the narrative at times. Milind Prakash Jog’s cinematography brings a certain class to the execution. Both the editing and the writing are all over the place; there’s no sense of continuity, and the subplots are put together haphazardly.

Highlights?

Tyagi’s moral/ethical dilemmas as a judge

Negi and Mintu’s love track

The attempt to capture the messiness of judicial procedure and the nepotistic ways of the system

Drawbacks?

Haywire, erratic storytelling

Neither the comedy nor the drama works

Too many subplots; some poorly fleshed out

Did I Enjoy It?

In parts

Will You Recommend It?

Not really, if only you have the patience to tolerate the haywire execution

Maamla Legal Hai Season 2 Series Reviewed by M9 News

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