‘Inside Edge’ (2017, Season 1) was one of the most popular digital shows made in the recent times. The show, which revolved around the foul-play happening in the Power Play League (a fictional cricket tournament loosely inspired from IPL), was one of the first big-ticket web shows launched in India and its massive success gave a lot of people within the industry the confidence to come up with more big-budgeted shows in the digital space. Now, that the second season has arrived two and a half years after the first one was launched, one looks forward to see whether it has lived up to the mammoth expectations attached to it.
The show traces the journey of the key characters after what they went through in the first season. This time, there is another PPL tournament happening and the stakes are much higher. Yashvardhan Patil or Bhai Sahab, the President of The Indian Cricket Team and the founder of the Power Play League, likes to have things his way but he is oblivious to the fact that Vikrant Dhawan (Vivek Anand Oberoi) is coming after him. After last season’s win, Vayu (Tanuj Virwani) comes back stronger but also, seems more aggressive and reckless now. His relationship with sister Rohini (Sayani Gupta), the team analyst of the Mumbai Maverics, takes a beating as they have a tiff over somebody whom they know from their past. Arvind Vashishth (Angad Bedi) is taking a break from cricket when Manoharlal Handa (Manu Rishi), the owner of Haryana Hurricanes, comes tracking him all the way down to a foreign country and, in his own words, makes him an offer he can’t refuse.
The 10-episode series packs in a large amount of content. There are characters we saw in the first season and then, there are a bunch of new ones whom we discover in the new season. The dynamics between the characters keep changing as the narrative unravels itself. The show is dressed as a thriller and it throws up twists and turns at regular intervals without fail. Most of the turns in the story are deliciously thrilling and they manage to keep you at the edge of your seats. At the same time, the tender moments in the show, including the ones which involve heightened emotional drama, have been handled with a lot of sensitivity. The thread between the first and the new season have been joined nicely but there are a few loose ends as well. One understands the intention of the writers to set the tone of the show pretty quickly but in the process, they do not give us a glimpse of the consequences which a lot of players had to face as a result of their actions. As the first episode begins, everything seems normal – you see the calm after the storm that one witnessed in the first season. The turbulence that must have stayed on for some time is something we do not get to see a glimpse of. Siddhant Chaturvedi’s character (Prashant Kanaujia) was fleshed out very interestingly in the first season. Here, he suffers from hallucinations on account of something he did in the first season. The reason behind his troubled mind does not come across as very convincing and that is the reason one finds it difficult to connect oneself with what he is going through. Vikrant’s story also needed a more fulfilling arc. Barring these aberrations, there is not much one can complain about as the show delivers bucketful of entertainment and keeps you hooked to it throughout the ten episodes. It is an urban show packed with tons of masala!
Vivek Oberoi has limited screen-time in this season but this time, he looks even more menacing and owns up every scene which he appears in. I would be interesting to see how or what this character metamorphosises into in the next season. Zareena Malik come across a more layered character than it did in the first season and Richa Chadha brings all those layers to the fore with her effective performance. As Yashvardhan Patil/Bhai Saheb, Aamir Bashir gets to play one of the best roles he has done in the recent past. His performance is outstanding! Tanuj Virwani has a great screen-presence. He acts very well too. Though his movie outings were not very successful, he has it in him to become a movie star. The same can be said about Sapna Pabbi who plays Mantra in this season. Sapna has been a part of a few TV and web shows, films (including Shoojit Sircar’s unreleased ‘Satrah Ko Shaadi Hai’) and is an actor whose talent has been explored to its fullest potential. She has a very good presence and puts forward a sincere performance. Angad Bedi looks every bit the principled character he plays. Now, when one thinks of it, he was as convincing as the notorious Rajveer Singh in ‘Pink’ (2016) as he is here. Two diametrically characters played to perfection! Sayani Gupta gets ample scope to show her mettle as an actress and she does very well. Siddhant Chaturvedi, who was so good in season 1 and more recently in ‘Gully Boy’, is good but suffers on account of the way his character has been etched out in this season. Luke Kenny and Elli Avram pitch in with effective performances in smaller roles.
The writers ( Karan Anshuman, Saurav Dey, Ameya Sarda, Niren Bhatt and Sailesh Ramaswamy ), directors ( Aakash Bhatia, Karan Anshuman and Gurmmeet Singh ) and the entire team have managed to put together a vastly entertaining season which turns out to be better than the first one. Just like the first season, this one, too, ends on a cliff-hanger and makes you wanting to see more. The good news is that the third season of the show has already been shot and this time one would not have to wait for two and a half years for a new set of episodes to arrive.