The first season of the first Malayalam series from Hotstar, Kerala Crime Files, was one series that, in my opinion, got the first-mover advantage. It felt pretty much like how one may try to break a conventional movie script into a series format, and the way the series tried to include the personal lives of the police officers and some of the cliffhangers in that season felt a bit too forceful. However, when it comes to the second season of Ahammed Khabeer’s police investigation drama, which is written by Kishkindha Kaandam fame Bahul Ramesh, the series gets a pretty gripping texture. The lack of spoonfeeding and the subtle way of disclosing information make it a thriller with pretty much zero low points.
Kaniyarvila police station in Trivandrum went through a major power shift as almost all the officers in that police station got transferred due to their alleged affiliation with criminals. However, during that process, the newly joined officers get to know that one of the transferred officers, Ambili Raju, has gone missing, and his family has not been able to get in touch with him. What we see in the second season is the investigation to find this particular police officer.
The second season, in terms of treatment, has a significant tonal difference from the first. Bahul, who did a remarkable job in packaging a psychological drama in the disguise of a whodunit in Kishkindha Kaandam, is using the same recipe. However, since the flavor of it is still tasty, we get a different thriller that has the same ingredients but in a different proportion. It is the structuring of the script that makes things pretty exciting. The illusion of deception they create by certain non-linear placement of scenes is pretty effective, and it is not done with the intention of distracting the audience by focusing on something totally unimportant in the full picture.
The portions that show us the background story of Ambili Raju have the beauty of a character study. In fact, almost everyone in the series who comes under suspicion is explored in a deeper way, making those characters compelling for the viewers. One of the things that didn’t work for me in season one was how they couldn’t really justify the relevance of certain subplots. But here, in every track, we have a dog in one form or the other. Each dog has a solid purpose that blends very naturally to the story. At various stages of the investigation, various dogs are featured, and in a way, one can say that the dogs were the ones that were guiding the narrative.
Even though it has retained some of the characters from the first season, the story this time is not directly connected to what we saw in the first season, and hence, there is no need to be aware of the developments in the Aju Varghese-led season. Like I already said, this may well have the syntax of a whodunit. But where the series sort of scores is in the way, it places an emotional track towards the end. In the early portions of the fifth episode of the series, Bahul manages to make the audience believe that they may have cracked the case. And just when we think the series will move in a certain direction it drifts away to a different possibility, and there is a phase in the story where multiple characters are giving their statements to the police and we observe their words with the same level of doubt the police show. The constant challenge the script throws at the audience is what makes the series engaging.
The organic way the investigation unravels, making it a learning experience for the central character Noble, is somewhere making him see things from the POV of the audience, something Bahul did in Kishkinda Kaandam with the character of Aparna. How the character played by Aju Varghese comes into the picture has a very natural flow, and it also helps the series to expand its canvas. The character designs are another interesting thing about this season. The kind of bond between Ambili Raju and Ayyappan (played by Harishree Ashokan) is a bit weird, but it is also fascinating. The backstory associated with the “bad” guy also has some interesting layers of identity.
Arjun Radhakrishnan assumes the mantle from Aju Varghese and is in charge of the investigation. Noble is a newbie who gets this challenging case in his first law-and-order posting. The evolution of that character was performed very effectively by Arjun. Ahammed Khabeer is not trying to make Noble this clueless, frustrated guy who would scream, and I feel that sort of restrains Arjun for the better. Lal reprises his role as CI Kurian, and he is more in that supportive space this time. Even though his character appears discretely through multiple episodes in a role that can be called an extended cameo, there was an ease in the way Aju Varghese performed SI Manoj. The sort of calmness an officer would obtain through experience was there in his performance.
Unconventional casting choices were, in a way, a USP of season one, as most of us wouldn’t have imagined someone like Aju Varghese to play a lead who is a cop. In season 2, the surprise comes in the form of Indrans and Harishree Ashokan. Even though we have seen Indrans in darker shades in recent years, Ambili Raju and his life philosophies are peculiar. Harishree Ashokan also nails the grey and grumpy character superbly. In certain combination scenes of the two with minimal verbal exchanges, the tone of the performance is so different that it is impossible to imagine that these two once pulled off an epic scene in Punjabi House. Renjit Shekar gets an extensive role in the series. Actor Sirajudheen gets a meaty role that is pretty different from his usual ones. Fara Shibla, Navas Vallikkunnu, Sanju Sanichen, Noorin Shereef, Jeo Baby and several others are in the extensive star cast of the series.
If you remember Kishkindha Kaandam, even though it has the structure of trying to find what happened to Chachu, it reaches a climax where the “who” becomes less important for the story, and we come out of the movie thinking about the helpless situation of the characters. In Kerala Crime Files Season 2, Bahul Ramesh is not trying to put characters in a melancholic space similar to the Asif Ali starrer. But the final moments of the series, which have the smiles from two characters, who are at opposite ends of the spectrum, sort of manage to make the audience think more about how the making created that high moment despite the reality being tragic.
