‘Rana Naidu’ Season 2 Series Review: Rana Daggubati Leads a Congested and Repetitive ‘Ray Donovan’ Remake

Directors: Karan Anshuman, Abhay Chopra, Suparn Varma
Writers: Karmanya Ahuja, Karan Anshuman, Karan Gour, Ryan Soares, Ananya Mody, Vaibhav Vishal
Cast: Rana Daggubati, Venkatesh Daggubati, Surveen Chawla, Arjun Rampal, Kriti Kharbanda, Rajat Kapoor, Abhishek Banerjee, Sushant Singh, Rajesh Jais, Tanuj Virwani, Dino Morea
Streaming on: Netflix
Language: Hindi

A whole lot of nothing happens in Season 2 of Rana Naidu, the Indian adaptation of Ray Donovan. The first season (2023) was populist and provocative for the heck of it, what with its look-maa-sex-gore-expletives rhythms. But at least it was a world-building phase, where fan service prevailed (the casting coup of a star uncle-nephew duo) and viewers could be introduced to the concept of a badass Hyderabadi “fixer” in Mumbai, his daddy issues, and the endless struggle to fix his own family. It was like watching a celebrity gossip column posing as an OTT-template action thriller. A slog, but a new one.

This season isn’t half as…average. The novelty is gone. It’s far more greedy and congested. Poker-faced Rana Naidu (Rana Daggubati) embarks on “one last job” to secure the financial future of his family — his wife Naina (Surveen Chawla), kids, and two brothers Tej (Sushant Singh) and Jaffa (the prolific Abhishek Banerjee) — only for his dad Naga Naidu (Venkatesh Daggubati) to gatecrash their life again. This last job looks more like a notice period, but never mind. He doesn’t exactly look strapped for cash, but never mind. There’s a dastardly new villain named Rauf (Arjun Rampal) from Naidu’s murky past, but this murkiness remains a mystery. There’s also a billionaire family that owns a film studio, a T20 cricket franchise, Rana’s fate and more — except they’re not billionaire enough to not be blackmailed, arrested, framed or have their secrets leaked by news channels. No, sir. It’d be boring if powerful people were invincible and above the law.

Rana Daggubati in 'Rana Naidu'

The series has so many characters, subplots, conflicts and loyalties that every second scene feels like the end of a sentence whose beginning we’ve forgotten about. Rana, cut off from father-figure and politician OB Mahajan, starts working for the Oberoi family. Patriarch Viraj (Rajat Kapoor) has no purpose other than looking rich and tolerating his squabbling adult children. Daughter Alia (Kriti Kharbanda), whose upscale-Juhu drawl is its own character, wants to buy a Mumbai T20 franchise so it can share a universe with Inside Edge (from the same creators); bratty son Chirag (Tanuj Virwani) resists the sale of their studio. Naina has an affair with gym-bud Naveen (Dino Morea) without knowing he’s a crooked cop. Her kids — a son who’s kidnapped in the first episode; a daughter who sees the brutal murder of a friend — are morose. Brother Tej wants to sell their stunt company to settle down with his lover in Lisbon; brother Jaffa is busy discovering his manhood with an employee named Tasneem. And dad Naga Naidu is in trouble with loan sharks and refuses to mind his own business.

The problem with having to juggle multiple arcs is the collateral damage it causes. The heavier themes — the inescapable cycle of generational trauma, the poisonous hold of a father, a dysfunctional marriage, a saviour complex — are flattened into tones because there’s no time to explore them. For instance, Naga is reduced to a bumbling old guy, the comic relief (the sort who breaks into a Telugu jig at a nightclub) in a story that’s determined to hit every genre. He has no aura, even if the writing believes that he remains the demon in the heads of his broken sons. The show’s reach for humour — pockets of levity to puncture the inherent seriousness — is a crude stretch. Jaffa’s mental instability, in particular, is mined for a kind of mass-South entertainment. The background score goes wonky when he leers at Tasneem, a stuntwoman, from his office window and touches himself; this is supposed to be funny and endearing. As is the postcoital moment in which he yells that he’s finally had sex, which in turn prompts Tasneem to probe about the childhood abuse that’s haunted him; the transition of mood is awkward. At another point, a chase to the station that ends in a marriage proposal is inter-cut with a bomb-strapped Naga being frantically driven to the coast before he explodes — again, the music suggests it’s a comedy, but in what world?

Most of the action set pieces feel like they’ve been inserted into the show for stylistic value, which is fine, but it feels purely functional. The neon-lit rooms and strobelights and sudden lighting changes look designed and gimmicky: a shootout in a Goan nightclub, a shootout at a wedding, a brawl in the cricket headquarters and in its parking lot, a rampage at a Worli chawl. None of the choreography is remarkable, because unlike spiritual sibling The Family Man, they rarely feel organic to the setting and storyline(s). A ridiculous scene revolves around a goofy heist at the movie studio; its entire purpose comes down to a moment where an employee catches the thieves only to roll her eyes and declare she’s joining Netflix anyway. I’m tempted to write “Lol no” here.

The disjointedness shows in how the plot puts side characters on the backburner while it gets busy with others. When a loved one is in the hospital, Rana has the time to pull off an elaborate sting operation on the side; there’s also enough time for the gang to exact violent revenge in between the death and funeral of said loved one. I wish I could compartmentalise like that. Rauf goes missing for a while, too, and he only appears by opening fire or killing a dude. Chirag merely declares he’s going on a vacation before joining his sister’s project, and disappears; it’s like the screenplay just gets bored of him. The sibling rivalry between Alia and him is resolved in no time; ditto for a bond-splitting spat between Rana and Tej. The formulaic pace ensures that there are no emotional remnants of any major event.

A good drinking game is to guess the dynamic between Rana and Naina whenever we see them together. I like that the series doesn’t judge their choppy marriage and transgressions, but it also isn’t clear about the continuity of the tension between them. Of the very large cast, Arjun Rampal is the only one having a blast as Rauf, the snarling don who can do or say anything without any repercussions. He enjoys himself: the hammy body language, the chuckles and taunts, the incessant tying of the ponytail. One of the only meta jokes to land features him playing the moral police and scolding a wounded Rana for cursing in front of a child. Most of the other performers play simplistic prototypes, at the mercy of an eight-episode script where the ‘dialogue-baazi’ and wordy face-offs could be one-line emails.

Somewhere in the mess, there’s a genuinely fertile crime thriller about a fixer who uses guilt and toxic empathy — preventing his brothers, wife and kids from leaving him and living their own lives — to fuel his addiction to his job. He wants to ‘protect’ everyone around him so that he has a purpose to continue fixing the darkness of others’ lives. Daggubati is studious for the most part, but the show’s most expressive portions revolve around Rana’s desire for others to need him. There’s not enough of this narrative stillness and curiosity; the result is a season that stumbles in even being the best version of itself. A symptom of this emerges early on, when Rauf’s intro happens in a clunky flashback instead of the prison reveal that closes the episode. It’s an anticlimactic shot. A jailer is supposed to tell him that he’s lost his cousin; this plays out uncannily like the viral Hitler-Reacts parody rants, where a scene from Downfall is used out of context with subtitles in the most hilarious ways (example: “Hitler reacts to news of a lockdown” or “Hitler reacts to Messi winning the world cup”). One can imagine the Rana Naidu edition being: Rauf reacts to being stuck in the wrong series, or Rauf reacts to being accidentally edited out of a whole episode.