Paatal Lok is the new crime thriller web series on Amazon Prime which is produced by Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma. The series became very famous right after it was released, the lockdown also contributed to the number of people who watched it. The series is about an assassination gone wrong and how an unimportant cop somehow lands this case and ends up sucked into a very deep scheme.
The series is praised for a lot of reasons, first would be the acting, frankly everyone performed very well, you won’t be disappointed there. The plot is decent and you actually will be hooked onto the series due to the suspense. The use of mythological terms like Paatal Lok, Swarg and Dharti is used to refer to the socio-economic divisions in India referring to Lutyens Delhi as Swarg, Noida and Vasant Vihar as Dharti and Jamna Par as Paatal Lok. This is actually a very attractive take which makes the series even more interesting. The backgrounds of the 4 “suspects” actually showcases different social issues in India like child abuse, rights of the LGBTQ community and women safety in rural areas.
The series can be said to be a complex mix of stories of different people. You may like some and you might not like some, this actually confuses you at times as you don’t know whether you should feel excited or “meh”. The best part about this show is the character “Hathi Ram Chaudhary”, hot blooded, sort of cool yet his personality is showcased perfectly throughout the show. The show is pretty dark and a lot of you might feel its depressing. Coming to the Question, is Paatal Lok overrated? In my opinion, yes, definitely.
I mean though the show has a lot of positive points, it is not worth the hype it created. The show doesn’t make you feel extreme emotions, yeah you might be affected but you won’t notice. You will feel the same at the start of the series and at the end. Its consistency is sort of annoying, in shows like this you expect to feel sudden emotions. The reason for this is that it is too complex, a lot of different stories are going on at the same time and you never really get to enjoy what your feeling before a different scene which awakens a different emotion comes on the screen. It’s a suspense series and you will obviously be hooked onto it due to how interesting it and the suspense. But in comparison to a series like “Sacred Games”, it forgets to give time to the viewer to enjoy what is happening on the screen.
Overall despite being a bit overrated, the series is pretty good, though it lacks some important things which would have made it more enjoyable, it is still pretty good series which should be watched by all crime thriller fans.
