Bandish Bandits Season 2 Cast/ Actors: Ritwik Bhowmik as Radhe, Shreya Chaudhry as Tamanna, Sheeba Chadha as Mohini, Atul Kulkarni as Digvijay, Rajesh Tailang as Rajendra, Kunaal Roy Kapur as Arghya, Divya Dutta, Rohan Gurbaxani, Yashaswini Dayama, Aaliyah Qureshi, and Saurabh Nayyar.
Bandish Bandits Season 2 Director: Anand Tiwari
Bandish Bandits Season 2 Release Date: December 13, 2024
Bandish Bandits Season 2 Available On: Amazon Prime Video
Bandish Bandits Season 2 Released/ Available In Languages: Hindi
Bandish Bandits Season 2 Number Of Episodes: 8
Bandish Bandits Season 2 Episode Duration: 50 minutes (Approx Each Episode)
Bandish Bandits Season 2 Critic Review:
In our autograph books way back in school, a favourite verse was, “East is East, West is West. When they meet, it’s the best.”
Bandish Bandits makes the same point, embellishing it with blended, mood-elevating music.
There’s usually an ambience-fatigue when a fresh premise goes into a second season and struggles to say something new. Kota Factory, Mirzapur, Undekhi and Aarya are prime examples of ambience-fatigue.
Anand Tiwari who writes, creates and directs, manages to duck the syndrome even as he continues to root for the Rathod gharana in Rajasthan while exploring new locations like Himachal Pradesh. With successor Radhe (Ritwik Bhowmik), opponent Digvijay (Atul Kulkarni), parents Mohini (Sheeba Chadha) and Rajendra (Rajesh Tailang) and on-off girlfriend Tamanna (Shreya Chaudhry) in their respective roles, new entrants, mentor Nandini Singh (Divya Dutta), students Ayaan (Rohan Gurbaxani) and Soumya (Yashaswini
Dayama), plus poet Imroz (Arjun Ramp[al), add their own musical notes to the main theme.
The theme remains unchanged. Tradition having to move with the times without losing its essence, its purity.
It works especially if you have a musical ear.
The gharana has its many crises after the death of Sangeet Samrat Radhemohan Rathod (Naseeruddin Shah) has sparked off a gossipy book on his life. There’s a lovely top shot of circles of mourners in white around Radhemohan’s funeral pyre, Digvijay once again spurned by the Rathods as Rajendra steps forward to perform the last rites.
Meanwhile, Tamanna takes off to a music school in Kasauli to train herself, trying hard to shake off the celebrity tag. Nandini Ma’am enters to a lilting butterfly rhythm.
It’s a get together of the cast when the India Band Championships (IBC) takes place, bringing out the musical competitiveness of the gharana, the students and sundry others.
Co-writers Atmika Didwania, Karan Singh Tyagi and Digant Patil, with additional screenplay by Sejal Pachisia and dialogues by Hussain Haidry, move into every debatable corner of the music world, giving lip sync, auto-tuning, genres and gender scales a turn under the spotlight as multi-generational romances, heartbreaks, compromises and rejections are stirred into the plot with misunderstandings underlining most of the drama.
Of course, there are tiresomely familiar visuals of the IBC and the convenient overlooking of situations. For instance, a social boycott and withdrawal of royal patronage that leads to the disappearance of students and concerts, finds Mohini compromising her singing as a side attraction at a wedding. But very soon, the director forgets the lack of students as an inexplicable bunch turns up eager for Mohini’s lessons.
‘Sing one for the kitchen, one for the soul’ is the compromise line Radhe too hears in the city. And some of the poetic gyaan is ho-hum.
But there are moments that touch a chord. A guru pranam by Mohini-Rajendra-Digvijay-Radhe is unexpected.
Most of the music (not all of it) has energy and melody, Shankar Mahadevan’s stirring Sajan Bin… spilling over from the earlier season to make a lovely background instrumental. ‘Garaj Garaj’ from the last season also lingers like a welcome lover. Give it to the musical supervision of Akashdeep Sengupta, the original BG score of Souumil Shringarpure and Ana Rehman’s ‘Ghar Aa Maahi’.
Taking off with a tribute to late actors Rituraj Singh and Amit Mistry, the performances by Rajesh Tailang, Atul Kulkarni, Sheebha Chadha and Divya Dutta add value to the show. The youthful presence of Ritwik Bhowmik, Shreya Chaudhry and Rohan Gurbaxani provides a pleasant balance.
Bandish Bandits Season 2 – Watch Or Not?: Music has its own appeal.
Bandish Bandits Season 2 Review Score Rating: 3 out of 5 (i.e. 3/5)
Bandish Bandits Season 2 Official Trailer:
Bandish Bandits Season 2 Official Trailer (Credits: Prime Video India)
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