Amazon Prime Original
Created by : Sudip Sharma
Written by : Sudip Sharma, Sagar Haveli, Hardik Mehta, Gunjit Chopra
Directed by : Avinash Arun & Prosit Roy
Starring : Neeraj Kabi, Gul Panag, Jaideep Ahlawat, Abhishek Banerjee, Mairembam Ronaldo Singh, Swastika Mukherjee
Composer(s) : Naren Chandavarkar, Benedict Taylor
Producer(s) : Clean Slate Films
Original network : Amazon Video
Year : (2020- )
What makes a web series strike a chord with the audience?
A mysterious and catchy title, impeccable casting, a good story line, tight screenplay, powerful dialogues, apt cinematography, sensible direction…
Paatal lok aces in all these departments and hence comes out as a true winner. A big congratulations to the team!
Web series with each passing day are proving the fact that you don’t need big names to make a project successful. Good content delivered by some talented artists have all the potential to make a show worth remembering.
Paatal Lok as the name suggests brings all the dark problems that are rotting since ages in deep down in our mindsets.
Economical gaps, corruption, patriarchy, male domination, feminist, liberals, politicians, police, molestation, perverts, bullying, religious dogmas, social taboos, leftists, rightist, discrimination based on cast, creed, class, religion, region, sex and what not! You name an issue and the series has tried to raise it. It is simply amazing how the show has managed to touch so many sensitive issues without affecting the main storyline. And it’s also commendable how all these issues have not been shown in a typical cliched manner.
You can not applaud the team more for carrying on with so many subplots that don’t take you away from the main plot but instead allowing it to blossom in a more holistic way. After finishing the show you will surely be surprised that how did they manage to show much in just 9 episodes. How did they afford to give even the side roles so much of weightage? Imran Ansari, Tope Singh, Kabir M, Mary, Dolly, Sara, Renu, Siddhartha, Raju Bhaiyaa, Bajpayee, Gwala Gurjar, Dunalia, Singh Saab, Master Ji, Chanda, SHO Virk, DCP Bhagat, Jai Malik, Vikram Kapoor and the list goes on and on… Even you can not forget the name – Tokas. Once again kudos to the entire team.
Avinash Arun (Director), Prosit Roy (Director), Sudip Sharma (Writer), one may not be aware of these names but after watching the web series you will surely want to see more of their works.
Jaideep Ahlawat was born to play Hathi Ram Chaudhary. Yes, you read it write, the protagonist of the story is named Hathi Ram. A good man, even with all his flaws, a good man. A loser in all possible ways who has to win at any cost, a tough personality that mainly runs by the emotions. A hero with hardly any charisma, that’s not an easy role to play. But Jaideep Ahlawat has nailed it by all means.
Neeraj Kabi as Sanjeev Mehra is exceptional. It will be difficult to know throughout the series that whether he is a victim or the villain. He will leave you impressed with his opportunism for sure.
Abhishek Banerjee as Vishal Tyagi aka Hathauda Tyagi didn’t require too much dialogues to mark his presence. His silence has spoken and his eyes have acted for him.
Paatal Lok is just not an another crime story where a cop is going to all lengths to solve a case but a solid punch on the various systems that have become part and parcel of our lives and has try to expose all the abnormalities that have started to appear very natural to us. The series has dealt well with the various emotions(read diseases) of the human mind – Greed, Fear, Guilt, Lust, Violence, Anger, Frustration, Ambition, Jealousy, Prestige, Attachment…
The way the series has emphasized on how a person becomes a criminal is truly remarkable. It asks a very serious question to everyone – If you were in that situation would you have acted differently?
You will see how the difference between the three worlds – Swarg Lok(Heaven), Dharti Lok(Earth) and Paatal Lok(Hell) has been portrayed via this web-series and it has gone famous among the memers as well. But the bitter truth is there are no three worlds. There is just one world where we live in and it has all the possibilities to become the Heaven but we are too much adamant to make it a hell. It’s all in our minds. A respectable person can be the most heartless person you will ever meet and a cold blooded murderer can be an animal lover. The mind offers you all the possibilities. The choice is yours which world you want to live in.
One take away that this exceptional series offers to all of us is –
“If a man loves a dog, he is a good man.
If a dog loves a man, he is a good man.”
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