When we first met Hathiram Chaudhary in the summer of 2020, humanity was in the grip of a severe pandemic, and ‘paatal lok’ — to now put it lightly — didn’t seem to be too much of an alien word (or world) at that moment. The show provided a much-needed distraction, and was a rare watch that gave us food for thought, metamorphosing from a police procedural to a tightly-knit thriller that compelled us to examine the fault lines of caste, social prejudice, marginalisation, vote-bank politics, fake news and religious divide. Five years later, Hathiram — played like second skin by the irrepressible Jaideep Ahlawat — is back. In Season 2, the stakes may be higher, the socio-political environment more tense and the cocktail of betrayal, deceit, double-cross and revenge more tricky and tenuous… but Hathiram has remained the same. A man still world-weary and honest to a fault. But if angst defined Chaudhary in the first season — a sincere if bullheaded cop thirsting for one challenging case in his predominantly unremarkable career — it is acceptance that forms his core this time. Hathiram hasn’t made any significant strides in his career, but as a man he seems content. ‘Seems’ is the operative word here.

When Hathi Ram Chaudhary says in his world-weary manner, ‘hum toh paatal lok ke permanent niwasi hain’, he’s not just addressing a character in the series. He’s plunging us into the nether-world again, and we dive right in, willingly. The first season of Paatal Lok (2020), directed by Avinash Arun and created by Sudip Sharma, quickly become a benchmark, in the way it lifted a familiar world — weatherbeaten-but-idealistic cops pulled into cases of murder and corruption in high places — by singular story-telling, and characters that stayed with us. I’ve sorely missed my favourite cop, entire lifetimes imprinted in the craggy lines of his face, in the interim. Welcome back, Chaudhary sir.