Crime dramas are always safe bets. Everyone knows this. So do creators and consumers. This year was no different: wherever you turned in 2025, there was yet another crime-thriller-murder-mystery being laid out, almost as an assembly line, across all streamers. In the flood, a handful of series managed to refresh tropes, giving us smartly-written stories and characters. Paatal Lok: It’s been nearly a year since I watched Paatal Lok 2, and I haven’t forgotten Inspector Hathi Ram Choudhary’s craggy face, and that revelatory conversation in the jeep with his colleague ACP Ansari, before that shocking tragedy intervenes. Jaideep reprises Hathiram Chaudhary in a deeply layered and intense performance anchoring the new season. Paatal Lok 1 came out in 2020. In the five years intervening, many things have changed: newbie cop Ansari (Ishwak Singh) is now Hathiram’s senior, and the action has shifted from Jamuna paar to faraway Northeast. But the moral centre of the darkness — paatal lok– stays constant in Hathiram’s steadfast demeanour: Jaideep Ahlawat is one of the best things to have happened …