‘Kohrra 2’ review: Gripping and suspenseful, but the edge is missing

At the end of Kohrra (2023), a door closed on one of its most memorable characters, Punjab police inspector Balbir, while another was left ajar for Balbir’s assistant. Amarpal Garundi was last seen dancing at his wedding, believing that by marrying Silky he had resolved his messy personal life – he was sleeping with his sister-in-law.

Kohrra was never about smooth, satisfying conclusions. The Netflix series created by Sudip Sharma, Gunjit Chopra and Diggi Sisodia imagined a world in which the phrase “crime of passion” took on new meaning, leading to corpses but also living ghosts. With its dextrous interweave of murder mystery and an inquiry into the mysteries of the human heart, Kohrra set the bar high for crime shows – and for its sequel, as it turns out.

The second chapter is equally knotty, following Garundi’s story alongside pairing him with a new boss for a fresh crime. Sudip Sharma has also turned director for the latest instalment of six episodes alongside Faisal Rahman.

The first season began with the death of a London-returned Punjabi. Punjab remains precarious for people in search of love, employment or stability but especially for NRIs, the writers Sharma, Chopra and Sisodia assert in Kohrra 2.

In the town of Dalerpura, Preet (Pooja Bhamrrah) is found impaled at her brother Baljinder’s house. Preet was estranged from her America-settled husband Tarsem (Rannvijay Singha) and their children.

Apart from Tarsem, the suspects include the choreographer Johnny (Vikhyat Gulati) whom Preet had befriended upon her return. Others could be responsible too.

Baljinder (Anuraag Arora) is mired in debt. He has a formidable adversary in Karamjot (Deepak Kumar), the brother of his put-upon wife Twinkle (Mandeep Kaur Ghai). A quest by Jharkhandi migrant Arun (Prayrak Mehta) to find his missing father Rakesh (Satyakam Anand) is a separate sub-plot destined to mesh with the other strands.

While chasing the possible perpetrators, Garundi and Dhanwant are putting out home fires that refuse to stop raging. Garundi finds it difficult to shake off his sister-in-law Rajji (Ekta Sodhi).

Dhanwant too is handed her plate of woe. Her marriage with Jagdish (Pradhuman Singh) has reached the stage of separate lives under the same roof.

Kohrra 2 lays greater emphasis on the police procedural aspect, resulting in an eventful, gripping and suspenseful series that delivers purely as a crime thriller. The Hindi-Punjabi show sacrifices some of its brooding, philosophical edge for a more conventional expose of structural injustice.

The foggy atmospherics have made way for clean frames and a clear lighting pattern (the cinematography this time is by Ishaan Ghose). Everything is more visible, even at night, and therefore plainer.

The makers and editor Sanyukta Kaza deftly navigate a thicket of sub-plots. While Kohrra 2 is most concerned with its hard-working cops, other characters – Anuraag Arora’s beleaguered Baljinder, Prayrak Mehta’s desperate Arun – leave a mark. The only designated cheerful person, who retains his sunniness amidst the blanketing gloom, is the irrepressible constable Aulja (Devinder Singh).

The themes of secrets that refuse to stay buried and truths that are always inconvenient equally affect Garundi and Dhanwant. They toggle furiously between phone calls that are leads as well as worrying news from back home.

Garundi’s situation is always more engaging, partly because of the moral dilemmas it poses but also due to Barun Sobti’s perfectly judged performance. Sobti is excellent as the messy and yet endearing boy-man who has stopped playing a game that he loved not too long ago but doesn’t care to stick around to see how it turned out.

Garundi also feels altogether more human than Dhanwant. The imperative to dress every character in the heavy armour of emotional choices that demand responsible behaviour affects Dhanwant the most.

Could she, perhaps, have been typical? Might this have upset Kohrra’s misery matrix? Mona Singh ably plays Dhanwant, but her sub-plot is a slog at times. There are stronger scenes between Dhanwant and Garundi, each navigating a professional relationships that spills over into the personal ever so often.

Dark in tone if not in its look, mostly grim, with humour delivered through clenched teeth, and worried about the woes that afflict Punjab, the superbly performed Kohrra 2 has higher ambitions than its predecessor. But the element of surprise about what revelations the police investigation will bring has made way for the certainty that victories will be Pyrrhic.

The fatalism of the first season, which was a pleasant shock, now appears to be a formulaic given. The unknowable – why we love those we love – has become knowable.