I've said it before, I'll say it again - Srijit Mukherji has bagged the best lead actors since Sandip Ray's original trio (Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Saswata Chatterjee and Rabi Ghosh). All three leads look (and have been made to look) awfully similar to Ray's sketches and have clearly worked on 'becoming' the characters they play. Then again, nostalgia is a tough thing to beat. Our expectations would always remain sky-high.
With season 2, Anirban Chakrabarti has stopped being Ekendra Sen and has started to look and sound more like Lalmohan Ganguly without parroting his predecessors. He has understood the assignment (mostly) and has worked on delivering. Kalpan Mitra gets a lot of hate on social media, but I like him better than all his predecessors and peers post Saswata Chatterjee. Tota Roy Chowdhury's approach is more grounded and real, yet his portrayal elicits conflict. Despite wowing in some scenes, quite a few of his expressions and body language made me cringe. Even his voice sounded drab and too loud at times.
The supporting cast should've been stronger.
Kashmir has been used well, its ethereal beauty oozing in abundance in almost every shot; the 'travelogue' element well-incorporated. The colour-grading is definitely an issue, but can be overlooked if only the camerawork is taken into consideration.
As for the narrative, Mr Mukherji has kept the whodunit intact but has added elements of his own to spice things up a bit. The political tension was unnecessary in my opinion but does add another dimension for viewers who haven't read the story. Creative liberties here and there could've been avoided, especially the two big ones in the climax. The planchette scenes felt awfully underdone, comical even. Loved the "Hirak Rajar Deshe" reference, the "Sonar Kella" reference and, of course, the casebook montage.
The BGM, though repetitive, sounded good.
Our need for a Feluda story to look and feel like a Feluda story on screen is a mighty ask, for what we actually look for is the same feeling we feel every time we watch the two OG films and the OG TV series. Feludar Goyendagiri S02, like Feluda Pherot S01, is thankfully quite watchable.
