‘Dupahiya’ Season 2 Review: A Comedy of Errors Comes Into Its Own

Entertainment Created by potrace 1.16, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2019Movie reviews Created by potrace 1.16, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2019'Dupahiya' Season 2 Review: A Comedy of Errors Comes Into Its Own'Dupahiya' Season 2 Review: A Comedy of Errors Comes Into Its Own'Dupahiya' Season 2 doesn’t judge every character for breaking bad, but it has a moral spine.Kaashif HajeeMovie ReviewsPublished: 02 Oct 2026, 10:59 AM IST i Gajraj Rao in a still from Dupahiya Season 2.

When Dupahiya arrived last year, it was somewhat unfairly reduced to the shadow of rural dramedies like Panchayat. Some of the criticism was fair: despite its lovely, warm moments of levity, the show struggled to form its own distinctive identity.

Season 2, on the other hand, feels like it has come into its own. It is consistently entertaining, engaging and funny. Most of the jokes land, and the plot no longer feels weighed down by unnecessary segues or the pressure to make social commentary.

The new season opens with the fallout from Roshni’s cancelled wedding. Dhadakpur, the fictional Bihar village once known for going 25 years without a crime, can no longer maintain that pretence. Several members of the Jha family are about to “break bad” in their own ways.

Banwari Jha (Gajraj Rao) has lost his job as a schoolteacher and, with it, much of his sense of purpose. His son Bhugol (Sparsh Shrivastav) still dreams of going viral and becoming a star in Mumbai, while reluctantly making money as a Dream Girl-esque item dancer—much to his father’s disapproval.

Roshni (Shivani Raghuvanshi), meanwhile, is struggling to live up to her bold promise of becoming a strong, independent woman. She wants to pass the SSC exam and become a government officer, but is scoring around 13 out of 100 in practice tests when she needs 70.

Sparsh Srivastav in a still from Dupahiya Season 2

Banwari needs the approval of the village, represented by Pushplata Yadav (Renuka Shahane), and tries to find a way around it.

Roshni decides to cheat her way through the exam. Bhugol, told by a pundit that he must help a woman in his life achieve her dreams before he can lift a curse, turns his attention to his sister. Meanwhile, Inspector Mithilesh (Yashpal Sharma) gets tipped off about an industrial-scale paper-leak and exam-cheating scam.

What follows is a long comedy of errors, with its eight episodes counting down to Roshni’s exam. Each person’s scheme runs into another’s, and everything that can go wrong seems to do exactly that.

What holds this together is how clearly each character’s wants are established, and how likeable they remain even when they cross moral boundaries or find themselves in conflict with one another.

Amavas (Bhuvan Arora), a petty thief, fixer and jugaadu, is deeply loyal to Roshni. His masculinity is almost at odds with the fact that he is genuinely in love with her and is always there when she needs him.

Even Pushplata, framed as Banwari’s adversary, carries her own burden: the legacy of her late husband and father-in-law, while showing that she can fill their shoes.

Bhuvan Arora in a still from Dupahiya Season 2.

Behind the absurdity lies a more serious question: what happens when people cheat their way into becoming doctors or government officers?

The paper-leak scam is perhaps the season’s most topical thread. It gives the season a way to engage with the enormous stakes attached to competitive examinations, while keeping its characters human rather than turning them into mouthpieces for a particular social issue.

Dupahiya also offers a refreshing portrait of masculinity.

Bhugol’s dreams are at odds with the distance between Dhadakpur and Mumbai—not just in miles, but in accessibility. He wants to become an actor, but for now is stuck making money as an item dancer at local events. His burning ambition sits alongside his lack of agency, making him both funny and oddly sympathetic.

Banwari, meanwhile, is a patriarch who has lost his sense of purpose. He wants to hold his family together and restore its honour, even as his expectations bear down on Roshni. He sees his son as a failure and places some of the burden of redeeming the family on his daughter.

Roshni’s own high-minded goal of becoming a strong, independent woman is similarly at odds with her circumstances—and, increasingly, her ability to actually pass the examination she needs to clear.

Dupahiya Season 2 brings these different forms of familial pressure together quite effectively.

The performances are perhaps the season’s greatest strength. Each actor feels deeply connected to their character, which makes even the show’s more absurd turns feel rooted.

Shrivastav is a particular find. He has completely nailed Bhugol’s small-town, beta-male energy, moving with ease between his burning ambition, confusion, frustration and lack of agency. There is a lightness to his demeanour and body language that allows him to jump from one emotion to another without it ever feeling strained.

Raghuvanshi captures Roshni’s conflict between ambition and ability, dreams and circumstances. Her performance makes the character’s frustration feel grounded rather than simply comic. And Yashpal Sharma’s Inspector Mithilesh rises above what could easily have been a caricature of a bumbling, pot-bellied cop. His conviction about exposing the exam scam makes him Dupahiya Season 2’s moral spine; his determination to expose the corruption surrounding it gives the character a surprising seriousness.

Shivani Raghuvanshi in a still from Dupahiya Season 2.

Dupahiya Season 2 does occasionally fumble when it tries to build greater drama in its final episodes. The stakes rise, the climax devolves into a kind of virtuous heist, and the tonal shift threatens the lightness that serves the show so well.

A few episodes also drag beyond the breezy, sub-40-minute rhythm in which the comedy works best. Dupahiya is at its strongest when it allows its characters to stumble through one another’s lives rather than when it tries too hard to manufacture suspense.

Still, even its absurd climax manages to keep the humour alive. The season never quite abandons its basic good nature, even when everything around its characters is spiralling out of control.

Season 2 has found a way to be clear-eyed about the India it depicts without losing the warmth that made Dupahiya appealing in the first place. More importantly, it has stopped feeling like a show trying to be the next Panchayat. It has become Dupahiya.

Dupahiya Season 2 streams on Amazon Prime on 1 October.

(Kaashif Hajee is a writer, researcher, and educator based in London. He is Assistant Editor at The Polis Project and a film critic for The Quint, with bylines in The Caravan, Screen Rant, and SAAG Anthology. A graduate of NYU Abu Dhabi and SOAS, his work spans culture, politics, and media. He also mentors students worldwide as a college admissions counsellor at Crimson Education.)