Mithya: The Darker Chapter is ho-hum follow-up to a classic!

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Season 1 of Mithya remains, arguably, among the 10 best Indian web series ever for me for its sheer intensity and grip, and was wonderfully adapted from the British TV series, Cheat, by Rohan Sippy and his team of writers. But this time, in the best Farhan Akhtar-Don fashion, a sequel (which does not exist of the original) is worked out somehow and has too little meat. Consequently, while being termed as Mithya: The Darker Chapter, it actually ends up as The Duller Chapter.

Writers Nisarg Mehta and Aparna Nadig and director Kapil Sharma just cannot provide the weight Season 1 had, or even its ‘I-can’t-wait-for-what-happens-next!’ quotient. Of course, it takes forward the clash between Juhi (Huma Qureshi) and Rhea (Avantika Dassani), but twists the story into making it now seem as if Juhi has also committed plagiarism.

For that reason, a new character, Amit Chaudhury (Naveen Kasturia) is brought in, ostensibly by a vendetta-seeking Rhea (because of what happened in Season 1), to destroy the happiness of Juhi’s family, comprising of celebrated author Anand Tyagi (Rajit Kapur), mother  (Avantika Akerkar) and her.

It has already been revealed at the end of Season 1 that Rhea is actually Anand’s illegitimate daughter and that he knew it. It is now shown that Juhi’s son, Yash, is also due to her ‘affair’ with her friend, Vishal (Indraneil Sengupta), now ‘happily’ married.

The college, Hindi and English literature and the picturesque town of Darjeeling provide the backdrop and now we see a climax where, if Season 2 works, we will get another forced sequel.

The series purports to examine the pain of an unacknowledged extramarital offspring, but Rhea is no Amitabh Bachchan of Trishul, set on writing a wrong with a planned vendetta. What Rhea wants to do is cruel, unscrupulous and evil. What’s more, the crux now is little Yash, with whom Rhea gets obsessed for who knows what reason! Then there is her loyalist, Ronnie a.k.a. Arun (Krishna Singh Bisht), who is a complete blackguard, and a rather (as it turns out) confused cop, Suman (Anurita Jha), who is now investigating the past murder of Rhea’s ‘official’ father, Rajguru (Samir Soni). Yes, this one’s a whodunit too, but Rajguru’s murder soon fades into the background as more ‘dramatic’ things are shown!  In the end, Mithya 2 seems a forced creation, like a chef trying to better his award-winning recipe with gimmicky ingredients.

Thanks to the weak core, the music score too remains at average levels, though the technical aspects are neat. Huma Qureshi as Juhi is average, unlike in the earlier season, and seems to know that this time she will somehow have to complete her assignment. Rajit Kapur and Naveen Kasturia are effective, and so is Krishna Kumar Bisht.

But the real shocker, instead of the rocker she was last time round, is Avantika Dassani. In this follow-up, she is too mono-toned, though I admit that her role was not anywhere up to the mark. Her grimaces and forced expressions seem straight copies of the vamps of the 1970s and 1980s Hindi movies! The rest of the actors have nothing much to do, and are alright.

This is a classic case of great expectations turning ‘grated’! And I sincerely hope that a lot of cerebration goes into Season 3.

Rating: **1/2

ZEE5 presents Applause Entertainment’s & Rose Audio Visuals’  Mithya: The Darker Chapter  Produced by: Goldie Behl, Sameer Nair & Deepak Segal  Directed by: Kapil Sharma  Written by: Nisrag Mehta & Aparna Nadig  Music:Nirmal Pandya  Starring: Huma Qureshi, Avantika Dassani, Rajit Kapur, Naveen Kasturia, Parambhrata Chatterjee, Indroneil Sengupta, Avantika Kerkar, Anurita Jha, Krishna Kumar Bisht, Samir Soni, Payel Roy, Hayan Jain, Chien Ho Liao, Anindita Bose, Mahendra Bagdas, Rushad Rana & others