Applause Entertainment’s Mithya: The Darker Chapter , survives ‘The Curse Of The Second Season’ and even manages to be better than the first part, in parts. Huma Qureshi Who is at best, capable of a competent performance , pull herself out of her comfort zone to play a lecturer Juhi Adhikari of Hindi literature. As for her adversary, let’s just say Avantika Dassani doesn’t bring disrepute to the culture of nepotism. She is a better actress than her mother Bhagyashree, which admittedly is not saying much.
If mother Bhagyashree did Main Pyar Kiya, daughter Avantika’s project could well be titled Maine Plan Kiya. What a schemer her Rhea Rajguru is! In the first season Rhea caught her funky Teacher Didi making out in the college washroom . In the current season Juhi is caught plagiarizing another man’s book wholesale.
The characters including the protagonist are buried in the grey zone from where they won’t hold their breath to be rescued. Mithya The Darker Chapter is the kind of ballsy breakneck thriller that doesn’t shy away from addressing illicit sleazy relationships, even if it brings the protagonists’ heroism down by many pegs , and I do mean pegs, as the characters drink themselves silly and get their innerwear into a budge time after time.
Every character in Mithya: The Darker Chapter is flawed and to watch one of them turn around and act holier-than-thou after another makes a cardinal error, is ironical, to say the least.
Set in an idyllic tranquil Darjeeling, director Kapil Sharma(no relation to the stand up comedian) constructs a sinister spiral of deceit revenge and nemesis, all stewed in the juices of a steamy karmic cycle. Undoubtedly, the pace of narration is brisk. Mithya The Darker Chapter offers the kind of forbidden pleasure that one experiences when on a diet, stealing brownies from the refrigerator post-midnight when the family is asleep. It constantly prods the baser instincts in its characters , and by extension, the audience, and prides itself for its pulpy proclivities.
Admittedly there are some wild, thoroughly implausible leaps of faith in the plot which I cannot reveal
Compensating for the questions that arise while watching two women, a teacher and her bete noire a troubled borderline psychotic student, take each other on, are some rigorously ripening rites of passage that take the storyline from one summit to another. The men get the raw end of the stick. It’s the women who hold this show together.
This is one more winner from Applause Entertainment, and one that proves there is always room for excitement on the OTT platform.
