The second season of Mumbai Diaries isn’t a flawless follow-up but it boasts a distinctive identity, capable of holding its ground, especially in the face of its own missteps
At this point in the overcrowded, underwhelming landscape of Indian streaming, there is no bigger test of the tenacity of an Indian storyteller than their ability to mount a competent second season right after delivering a blistering first season. It is what differentiates meticulous storytelling from crowd-pleasing filmmaking. This is also the point where even the most talented creators seem to falter (think: Sacred Games S2, Made in Heaven Season 2) — revealing a gap between sense and sensibility in long-form storytelling.
When Mumbai Diaries — created and directed by Nikkhil Advani — premiered its first season in 2021, it became an instant classic. Set in the backdrop of the 26/11 attacks, the medical drama managed to locate the delicate balance between being a sharp critique of a battered city and a passionate plea for the price that its citizens pay for their courage. The intelligence of the show’s storytelling lay in the narrative and visual harmony between subtext and context.
2005 Mumbai floods: An apt premise
Exactly two years later, Advani and his writers (the second season is written by Yash Chhetija and Persis Sodawaterwala; the dialogue is by Sanyukhta Chawla Shaikh) return with a follow-up season that flits between being compelling and chaotic. The previous season derived its foundation from a real-life act of terrorism that altered the fabric of the city, allowing the show to weaponize fictional storytelling to craft a narrative that hinted at bleak consequences rooted squarely in reality.
The decision to mount another season then, is a creative indulgence in itself. And unlike the first season, the second season of Mumbai Diaries does feel slightly limited by its indulgences. That is to say, it isn’t a flawless follow-up but it is indeed one of those rare second seasons of a successful show that boasts a distinctive identity, capable of holding its ground — especially in the face of its own missteps.
A large part of that is the fact that even though this is a season assembled out of the acclaim of the previous one, its eye on the diagnosis of a city beset by administrative fallacies, remains the same. This time around, the makers take refuge in another real-life assault: the 2005 Mumbai floods that brought the city to a disastrous standstill, claiming the lives of over 1,000 people in under 24 hours. For anyone who hasn’t had to negotiate with the brutality of living in Mumbai, the dramatic stakes of a storyline (it’s hard to not want to compare a terrorist attack against a natural calamity) might feel slight. But for a show intent on revising the definition of the city’s resilience as a collective failure, there couldn’t have been, perhaps, a more apt premise.
Snapshots of a calamitous night
The second season of Mumbai Diaries opens in 2009, eight months after the fateful events at Bombay General Hospital (the show takes a revisionist approach to the timeline of the floods) and sticks to the template it perfected in the last season. Unfolding in private and public and blending the personal with the professional, the show witnesses the overworked and under-resourced staff at a government hospital confront the exigencies that accompanied 24 hours of patients arriving at the emergency ward as they battle inner demons.
So, over eight episodes, Mumbai Diaries pieces together the snapshots of that calamitous night from the perspective of surgeons, patients, nurses trying to make ends meet, grieving women, and an abusive ex-husband (Parambrata Chattopadhyay in an unhinged cameo).
Even though the characters remain the same, they feel like a shadow of the people they used to be. Dr. Kaushik Oberoi (Mohit Raina) is on trial for medical negligence, scapegoated by a system for prioritizing the life of a terrorist over that of a courageous cop. His wife, Ananya (Tina Desai), is pregnant with their child, giving him more cause to be caught up in an endless cycle of self-flagellation. Then, there’s Social Services Director Chitra Das (Konkona Sen Sharma, riveting as usual) forced to relive her thorny past as her abusive ex-husband reappears in her life.
Madness in the method
Even the rapid disillusionment of Mansi Hirani (Shreya Dhanwanthary), the journalist leading the media trial on Dr Kaushika Oberoi, feels cut from a different cloth. In a way, the fact that the central protagonists often come across as inscrutable people despite our familiarity with them elevates the proceedings, helping tide over much of the melodramatic narrative detours. It helps that this is a show that casts actors who feel so attuned to the parts they play that they help sell many of the unnecessary swings that the screenplay takes from time to time.
One of the things that made Mumbai Diaries stand out for me last season was the seamless synchronicity of its filmmaking. Kaushal Oza’s fluid and daring cinematography visualized the breathless urgency without overstating it. Oza is replaced by Malay Prakash this season, who lenses long takes with the same enthusiasm but falls short of hitting that crescendo. The camera doesn’t feel as invisible as it should have been and some scenes border on appearing stagey, undercutting the gripping pace that Advani aims for.
That also means that Priya Suhas’ production design is forced to do much of the heavy-lifting, something that occasionally takes away from its finesse. In that, the problem with these chinks in the show’s armour is that they work overtime in diluting the effect of the mayhem that makes up this season. The madness, as a result, appears before we can value the method.
