Prototypical face-off with shades of brilliance
Season 1 of Poison featured Arbaaz Khan’s digital debut in a revenge drama dotted with interesting twists surrounding power, greed, and money. The first season directed by Jatin Wagle has evinced a lot of interest among viewers with some notable performances from Tanuj Virwani, Sakshi Pradhan, Archanna Gupta, Riya Sen, and Freddy Daruwala. Now Season 2 of Poison which is streaming on Zee5 unfolds with some fresh characters emerging giving way for a new plot with extra venom.
Story-line
It starts with a horse race with Sara Oberoi (Raii Laxmi) and Harshvardhan Oberoi (Zain Imam) losing to Aditya Singh Rathore (Aftab Shivdasani). The fight for supremacy and ownership of racecourse gets Aditya and Sara together with Oscar (Vin Rana) getting thrown out of sister Sara’s place due to swindling of funds who turn out to be the trump card for Tony (Taher Shabbir) to take revenge on Aditya.
Meanwhile, Isha (Pooja Chopra) lands in Goa to investigate the diamond heist involving her brother Jaiveer (Karan Veer Mehra) who gets freed from jail by Sikander (Rahul Dev) who in turn wants Jaiveer to take care of her sister Hina (Asmita Sood).
On the other hand, Rani (Sakshi Pradhan), Pawan (Gaurav Sharma) along with Tony followed by Nandu (Faizal Rashid) continue their unending hunt for the diamonds.
This interesting tussle entwined with many twists and turns with everyone playing their own game filled with deceit, deception, disdain, and danger is to be seen on screen only to know more about various elements of Poison.
Performances
Both Raai Laxmi and Aftab who made their digital debut through Poison 2 are fabulous. Especially Raai excelled in a meaty role which unravalled her hidden talent and she is going to be recognized not only for her glamour but for her performance too.
For Aftab, it’s a cakewalk and though he looks clueless at times, he has managed to give out a decent performance.
It’s Taher Shabbir who is going to win hearts with his comical villainish character and the way he carried out the role of Tony will get him many laurels and chances too in the future.
Sakshi Pradhan who started where she left in the first season has proved herself once again though in a lesser important character.
Asmita Sood is ravishing while Pooja Chopra, Gaurav Sharma, Faizal, and Vin Rana have done a commendable job in their respective characters.
Rahul Dev needs to be mentioned for his shorter role but his presence made a lot of difference to the plot which got more distinct by his breezy performance.
Behind the scenes
It’s a complicated plot with more twists and many characters. Building an interesting narrative around such a complicated plot is not as easy as it looks. The writers Rehan Khan and Sharad Chandra Tripathi have made impressive contribution while director Vishal Pandya is successful in transforming such a complicated script into a plausible show on the screen.
Though there are some loopholes and loose ends as far as logic and topicality are concerned, Vishal covered all those with his efficient handling by incorporating necessary twists where they are needed the most to sustain the interest of the audience which demonstrates his overall grip on the script and narrative.
The background score by Srijan Vinay Vaishnav needs special mention as the music given by him helped the narrative in multiple ways to get elevated otherwise the whole series would have been flat and flimsy. Above all, the title tune is catchy and it completely sinks inside by the end of the final episode.
Verdict & Rating
The 11 episodes should have been shortened to give the whole series a more compact look as the initial episodes got dragged a wee bit. Otherwise, Poison 2 is a well-made revenge crime drama, a prototypical face-off with shades of brilliance comprising of all ingredients and marked by some riveting performances making it an enjoyable watch.
