‘Taaza Khabar’ season 2 review: Luck runs out in a stale follow-up
The six-episode Hindi series is out on Disney+ Hotstar.
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In the 2023 Hindi streaming series Taaza Khabar, a toilet attendant’s fortunes were transformed by a divine gift of being able to see events before they happened. Receiving the advance warnings as notifications on his phone, Vasant went from slumdog to top dog overnight.
Every rise has a fall. This barely-true maxim that creators swear by affected Vasant too. At the end of the season, he had dented a gangster’s wealth, annoyed his friends and received the notification to end all notifications: news of his own death.
Season two has returned to Disney+ Hotstar with the same pointlessness that greets the question “Did Vasant really die?” Written by Aziz Dalal, Hussain Dalal and Abbas Dalal and directed by Himank Gaur, Taaza Khabar’s new outing reeks of staleness and the unshakeable feeling of luck having run out.
A very-much-alive Vasant (Bhuvan Bam) spends six wearying episodes trying to pay off the underworld don Yusuf (Jaaved Jafferi). To make a gargantuan demand even gargantuaner, Yusf keeps upping Vasant’s debt – 100 crore! 500 crore! 1,000 crore! – just for the fun of it.
Vasant is also kept busy repairing his ties with his parents (Vijay Nigam and Atisha Naik) and patching up with his former girlfriend Madhu (Shriya Pilgaonkar). Vasant’s loyal friends Peter (Prathamesh Parab) and...
