Hearbeat - season 2 - review

What makes a drama series tick, in OTT, that too in Tamil? The question should've been pretty straight forward and not as difficult as it is for making a successful movie, for drama series are dime a dozen across scores of TV channels and none of them are found wanting for audience. The more the cry the merrier the TRP. In that context, the only challenge that OTT platforms might've had while streaming tamil series must've been to choose the path - either the well trodden and worn out cryathons aligning with Satellite channels or try for something genre specific like how they do across English and other foreign languages. This is where Heartbeat series in Hotstar finds the fine balance between being a soap oppaari (no pun intended) in tv and carving a niche OTT audience. 

While the setup might've been familiar one for Hindi audience with so many series happening on hospital based storyline, i guess this is a first for tamil. The first season was more on establishing the characters and their love interests with "Sindhu Bhairavi" movie story being the "heart beat" of the story, where in the heroine gets into the hospital where her mother works as Intern. The situation being that, the girl was born out of wedlock for a late teen mother, abandoned at an orphanage and still managing to become a doctor at the very same hospital where her mother is the chief doctor. They dragged this setup to the extent possible where in the finale episode, she gives up on both her mother for not revealing the truth and her lover, the hospital CEO, for revealing the truth about her.

The second season begins with couple of new faces thrown in the mix as fresh interns and new nurses. The casting is worth a mention for they fit in easily into a setup already a season old. When it was found to be going down the drain, with even doctors shown as hard core drinkers, celebrating their breaks with liquor, our perennial america mapillai, "Evam" Karthik makes an entry as the dad of the proverbial daughter in the series. His arrival heralds a pace and several different angles and options for the writers to explore and exploit, of which they do a fairly decent job. The ending, supposed to be a cliff hanger with the girl, for whom finally everything comes into place, except the information about her dad, which everyone in the series, the lightman till director, the audience (of course!!) knows about, but for her. The dad-daughter duo even bonds over upma across couple of episodes and if that wasn't clue enough, wonder how she cleared NEET to become a doctor!! The sindhu bhairavi saga continues and in the finale, despite undergoing a dozen surgeries within 5 minutes, she obviously survives and like the previous season, decides to ditch both her (same) mother and her  (same) lover, but this time for having revealed the truth about her father, to everyone except her. Nyaayamana kovam i would say. The TRP's have skyrocketed for this series having found the magic mix of laughter, liquor, love and liters and liters of tears!!

Season three is already in the watchline of many repeat audiences. One good thing about the series is, each episode is just about 20 mins long and they load 5 on the friday of every week. Easier to watch and more easier to fast forward as well. Looking forward to know whether Sindhu says bye to her ravi in next season at least or will they make a Sahana out of it!!!