Suzhal Season 2 review: Aishwarya Rajesh, Kathir show fritters away its strengths

A small town in South India. A religious festival drumming up nightly fervour. A crime most foul. Red herrings. Confused cops. These elements which made the first season of ‘Suzhal: The Vortex’ such a gripping watch are back in Season 2, except the town is different, and the crime, this time around, is revealed from the get-go: a local lawyer is found dead. Was it suicide, or murder?

Two of the lead actors are back, too. Kathir as the cop Sakkarai, is under a professional cloud for something he did in the previous season, and Aishwarya Rajesh as Nandhini, the young woman who slayed her demon in its satisfactory climax, is awaiting trial. Sakkarai has strong filial ties with slain lawyer Chellappa (Lal), and as he delves deeper, past secrets rise to the surface, and everyone connected to the victim comes under the scanner.

The first season of ‘Suzhal’, created by Pushkar and Gayathri, and directed by Bramma and Anucharan, was striking for various reasons: the mix of local, ingrained traditions, the colourful religious processions, predatory men, innocent women, and repressed emotions finally finding outlets, was strung together in such a compelling fashion that we overlooked the show’s occasional stretchiness and contrivances.

Sadly, Season 2, from the same team, with new co-director Sarjun KM, fails to hit the same notes. The processions with costumed participants chanting and dancing feel much too familiar. The locations are stunning, but the stormy interactions of the characters by the seaside– waves dashing against the rocks, the eye-catching coastline– seems more to set the scene than to advance the plot, which keeps getting bogged down in repetitive loops. And the background music is nothing but cacophony.

The high point, like in the first season, is the ensemble cast, each bringing their character to vivid life. For a while, though, it appears that Aishwarya Rajesh is given a thankless track, which involves getting close to a bunch of young women who are fresh entrants to the prison where she’s lodged, in order to discover their real story. It’s only after the initial episodes (there are eight in all, about 45 minutes each) that she gets the measure of where they are at, and turns her troubles into opportunity. Kathir is as solid as he was before, his struggle between being vulnerable and being a hard-nosed cop done well. The gravelly-voiced Lal is the most interesting character of this season, in the way he hides certain things, leaving his faithful wife and near-estranged son in the lurch.

There’s also the on-the-nose parallels drawn between the festival of Ashtakali, which worships eight goddesses, and the eight young women in jail, almost as if the viewers aren’t capable of making those connections by themselves. And the tendency to keep a sequence going, long after it has made its point.

Still, I do hope there’s a season 3, and it’s more on point than this one, which fritters away its strengths even as we watch.