Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Family Man’ Season 2 on Amazon Prime, An Indian Espionage Thriller With its Mind On More Than One Homefront

Season 2 of The Family Man (Amazon Prime) has taken its hero Srikant, played by a brilliant Manoj Bajpayee, offline from fighting terrorists as a secret government agent and deposited him in corporate boredom, the better for Sri to be a good father and husband. But it’s pretty clear from the get-go that the game needs him back, and this exciting first episode also teases how close all of that danger is to hitting him at home.

THE FAMILY MAN (SEASON 2): STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A tight shot on the front page of the Lanka Mirror. “Tamil Rebel Leader Bhaskaran Killed, Says SL Army,” goes the headline, and the camera pivots to the man reading it with a dissatisfied smirk. Clad in camouflage battle dress, he stalks out of his tent into the bustle of a military camp, and a title hits: “Northern Sri Lanka, A Few Years Ago…”

The Gist: “These idiots have killed me so many times,” Bhaskaran (Mimi Gopi) tells his second-in-command at the camp. Together with his brother Subbu (Srikrishna Dayal), Bhaskaran has been leading his Tamil forces against the Sri Lankan military in a quest for independence. But just as they’re preparing their biggest assault yet, the Tamil camp is attacked and destroyed. “They destroyed our people, raped our women, and mercilessly murdered our children,” Bhaskaran seethes as he flees the carnage to set up a government in exile in London. “They will pay.” And when The Family Man cuts from this weighty prelude to Mumbai in the present day and Srikant Tiwari (Manoj Bajpayee) strolling with dissatisfaction into the glittering office building where he’s become a corporate drone, it’s pretty clear that those violent events of the recent past are going to catch up to this family man. Srikant might have left the life of a counterrorism officer. But that doesn’t mean the life left him.

Sri retired from TASC, which for the purposes of Family Man is a counterrorism branch of India’s National Investigation Agency, because he became disenchanted with how his bosses liked to cover their own asses instead of protecting agents in the field. (In flashback, he laments the loss of one colleague and wounding of another in a terrorist attack on a New Delhi chemical facility that the government claimed was a gas leak.) But while he’s home each night for dinner, his wife Suchi (Priyamani) is distant, his daughter Dhriti (Ashlesha Thakur) is full of teenage rebellion and speeches about the patriarchy, and his young son Atharv (Vedant Sinha) has ADHD and a penchant for first person shooters. Sri is restless, and when his old TASC buddy JK Talpade (Sharib Hashmi) keys him into a secret hostage transfer, he giddily tracks the action over the phone from his office.

That hostage? Sabbu, the Tamil separatist, and he doesn’t submit without a shootout and standoff, but Sri works the phones to arrange a peaceful handover. Well, peaceful for now, anyway, but from the Indian government’s machinations to the Tamils in exile and the tumult of Srikant’s home life, The Family Man is setting up some serious dominoes to fall.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There’s more than a whiff of 24 here, especially in the delicate balance Sri strives for between domestic life and counterterrorism work. Showtime’s Homeland combined globe-trotting locales with terrorist troublemaking and the government agents responsible for nabbing them. And the fantastic British thriller Killing Eve took a former deskbound agent and dropped into a secret spy team tracking international assassins.

Our Take: Having used its first season to establish TASC agent Srikant Tiwari as smart, capable and as steadfastly dedicated to his work as he is to his family, the second go-round for The Family Man expands its scope, staging up a battle between Tamil warriors and opportunistic Sri Lankan army officers before expanding even further, bringing in the Indian government’s geopolitical chess game with Sri Lanka and China for control of Indian Ocean waters, a negotiation that triggers the plan to nab Sabbu, and that’s where Sri cuts back into the action. It’s not like anyone was going to believe he was really done with counterterrorism work, and Bajpayee plays the scenes with Sri getting chewed out by a bootlicking corporate lackey with squirmy delight. This guy belongs in the field, his hand on the hilt of the sword. IT is not a career for him, and he knows it, even if all that dirty work makes his home life suffer.

It’s an interesting, often stirring start to a promising second season for The Family Man, which offers international intrigue, counterterrorism heroics, and one fantastically-edited foot chase and shootout, where the camera floats above and through stucco walls and up and down staircases as government agents chase their dangerous prey. But Family Man keeps the pedal to the metal back at home, too — you can cut the tension with a knife around the Tiwari dinner table as Sri desperately tries to keep domestic life normal and pure even as he sneaks away to brood over the past. It’s safe to assume that the past won’t stay gone for long.

Sex and Skin: Nope.

Parting Shot: Dhriti tells the boy whose motorbike she’s on the back of to drop her off a block from the family home. Typical teen stuff for a conservative family, right? Maybe, until the kid texts a swarthy looking fellow in London to tell him everything is going as planned and that he dropped Dhriti at the Tiwari home. Somebody’s got eyes on Sri.

Sleeper Star: As Sri’s former TASC partner JK, Sharib Hashmi is a terrific comic foil to his smooth, noble, and all-business counterpart. A little rough around the edges, quick to swear about his sore knees, and gruffly complaining about contemporary Indian society, he’s an endearing everyman who lends a huge amount of levity to one serious scene when he can’t quite get comfortable in a saggy bean bag chair.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Saving the world isn’t your job anymore,” Srikant’s contented IT company man tells him during a smoke break. “Forget Pakistan and ISI,” he says, referring to the Pakistani intelligence agency, “and maybe start thinking about your TPS reports!” Neutered and brooding, a cloud of angst spreads across the former intelligence agent’s face.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Family Man took home a string of Indian media awards for its first season, including Best Actor for Manoj Bajpayee, and he’s magnetic in this fast-paced first ep of season 2. Family Man definitely has enough bureaucratic intrigue, spycraft, and prickly family dynamics to keep things interesting.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Watch The Family Man Season 2 on Amazon Prime