Popular OTT series Patal Lok 2 to premiere on January 17 on Prime Video

The first season was about this rookie cop coming in, training under Hathiram Chaudhary and then they kind of helping each other out through that difficult case and very difficult year of their life put together. But Ansari was always, in my head, the bright chap. Hathiram was the old fox.

New Delhi: Don’t rest on the laurels of season one and start from scratch. That is what the team of “Paatal Lok” told each other as they embarked on the second season of the show centred on a weathered Delhi policeman and his dogged investigation into a high profile murder, says series creator Sudip Sharma.

The first season of “Paatal Lok” became one of the most talked about shows when it premiered in 2020 on Prime Video. The second season has been four years in the making and became a reality after all the stakeholders set aside time a year ago to shoot it.

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Season two brings back Inspector Hathiram Chaudhary (Jaideep Ahlawat) and his subordinate Imran Ansari (Ishwak Singh) who is now his senior.

“When we started working on ‘Paatal Lok 2’, we were like, ‘Okay, we are starting a new season and now the onus is upon us to not f*** it up. That was the first thing that we told each other. And not to rest on the laurels of the first season and start from scratch,” Sharma told PTI in an interview.

Season two, which will premiere on January 17, is directed by Avinash Arun Dhaware who also steered the first edition, Sharma, whose writing credits include “Udta Punjab”, “NH10” and “Sonchiriya” and another successful series in “Kohrra” on Netflix, is the brain behind the series as a creator.

He said the team wanted to bring in the same kind of sincerity and hard work with which they approached the first season.

“I told the writer’s room, ‘Okay, let’s just forget everything that has happened in the first season, block out all the success stories, memes, dialogues and characters that became popular. It was almost like we were writing a new show with these couple of characters who have survived from the first season, and we are going on another journey with them.” Covid had made the decision to do another season difficult. All three had moved on to work on their individual projects — Sharma on “Kohrra”, Ahlawat on “An Action Hero”, “The Broken News”, “Jaane Jaan” and “Maharaj” and Dhaware on “School of Lies” and “Three of Us”, which also stars Ahlawat.

According to Sharma, commercial considerations were never a factor behind the “Paatal Lok 2” decision.

“We knew it was not coming from a place of ‘Oh, because the first season worked, so we want to do another season’. We wanted to work on it even before the first season released and became popular. It was always one of those deep desires that Jaideep, Avinash, I, even the rest of the team, all the HODs, all of us carried within us,” Sharma said.

In the trailer of the new season, Ansari and Chaudhary are shown investigating the murder of a political leader from Nagaland.

“I wanted my work to take me back to all these places I visited in my childhood and look at these people and characters through the lens of having known them once but now having moved away,” Sharma said.

He was keen to explore the “shifting dynamics” between Chaudhary and Ansari in the new season.

“The first season was about this rookie cop coming in, training under Hathiram Chaudhary and then they kind of helping each other out through that difficult case and very difficult year of their life put together. But Ansari was always, in my head, the bright chap. Hathiram was the old fox.

“When we were writing season one, (we were like) if there is ever a season two, then Ansari would have this journey and ‘What if the rookie cop is now the boss?’ That was very interesting to play off on,” he added.

Be it the first season of “Paatal Lok” or the equally praised “Kohrra”, Sharma has always been interested in exploring stories through the eyes of cops without stereotyping them.

“I admire them for the difficult jobs they do despite sometimes everything going against them and Hathiram imbibes some of this doggedness and resilience. There is something very old school about it that you find it in people of my father’s generation.

“I feel like portraying another side of them rather than the standard cookie-cutter corrupt cop, or the other version of this macho and superhero cop. They are no fun to me as they are far removed from reality. Reality, for me, lives in the greys rather than in the blacks and whites.” The way the first season exploded on the popularity charts was a surprise for Sharma, who thought he had made a “niche show”.

“Whenever we would be in doubt and one of us would say, ‘okay, isn’t this too nuanced or complex?’, my standard answer would be, ‘don’t worry, even if no one watches the show, that’s fine because let’s just make the show that we would like to see’. That’s the standard instruction to myself when I’m entering something.” Sharma said he is deliberately slow with his stories as he considers them to be a responsibility that involves the blood, sweat and tears of many. He also believes that writing, despite being a lonely process, has enriched him as a person.

“I like to marinate in my stories and ensure that I don’t take a wrong foot first because I was in a hurry to tell the tale. It’s an incredible responsibility and privilege to be able to do what I am allowed to do as a writer and artist. It is not to be taken lightly. I’m in no hurry. I would rather do five good things in my entire career than do things which are half baked.” Produced by Clean Slate Filmz, in association with Eunoia Films, the eight-episode “Paatal Lok 2” is created and executive produced by Sharma. It also stars Tillotama Shome and Gul Panag.