The Trial: Season 2 Review: Kajol's Show Promises Courtroom Fire, Delivers Drawing-Room Drama

If ‘The Trial: Season 2’ were a witness in an Indian courtroom, it would be caught fumbling with paperwork — offering more excuses than evidence. The Jio Hotstar series returns with the kind of promise you’d expect when Kajol is headlining a legal drama. She reprises her role as Noyonika Sengupta, part lawyer, part wife and part mother, who is trying to keep her family from collapsing. The premise is juicy: the personal bleeds into the political, courtroom battles clash with domestic melodrama, and Noyonika must find her ground when everyone around her—husband, colleagues, rivals — is out to shake it.

And yet, for a show that wears the courtroom as its badge, the series is oddly allergic to legal fireworks. Instead of the kind of sharp arguments or high-stakes cases that would define a gritty Indian legal drama, we’re served with soft landings, emotional monologues and neat closures that feel like they belong to a saas-bahu serial rather than a courtroom.

Kajol, The Saving Grace

Let’s get this out of the way: Kajol is the one and only reason ‘The Trial: Season 2’ is worth your time. She is magnetic even when the script falters. As Noyonika, she doesn’t just recite lines; she embodies the contradictions of an Indian woman straddling modernity and tradition. One moment she’s fighting for a client with fiery conviction, the next she’s fielding awkward questions from her children or confronting her husband’s slippery moral compass.

Her strength is in the silences — a glare that cuts sharper than words, a tired sigh that communicates a decade of disappointment. In lesser hands, Noyonika could have been reduced to a stock ‘woman torn between family and career’ trope. Kajol gives her flesh, fatigue, and ferocity. It’s a career-best performance in the streaming space.

Jisshu Sengupta, as Rajiv, plays the disgraced husband who’s both penitent and opportunistic. But the writing doesn’t give him enough dimension, leaving him a supporting player in a story that could have leaned harder into his menace. Sonali Kulkarni as Narayani Dhole, the political heavyweight with an axe to grind, is delicious to watch. She delivers the antagonism the season desperately needs, even if her arc is undercooked.

However, what ‘The Trial: Season 2’ proves is that a good ensemble can only go so far when the writing doesn’t give them much to chew on.

Sheeba Chaddha, who can usually elevate even the flimsiest material, is criminally underused here. As Malini Khanna, the senior partner who’s supposed to be both mentor and gatekeeper, she gets more screen time pouring judgmental glares than actually lawyering. It’s a waste of her deliciously sharp presence.

Alyy Khan, playing Vishal, floats in and out of the narrative like a half-formed idea. He could have been a character with teeth, a charming foil to Kajol’s moral earnestness. Instead, he spends most of his screen time setting up other people’s arcs.

Kubbra Sait, who’s proven her bite in previous shows, shows up as Sana, a colleague torn between loyalty and ambition. Her scenes hint at the ethical compromises young professionals make in India’s cutthroat corporate landscape, but the show never digs deep enough to give her a real arc.

Even the younger actors playing Noyonika’s children feel written as extensions of her angst rather than as characters with interiority. Their conflicts — whether with school, their father, or their mother’s decisions — skim the surface, often resolved with a few teary lines.

It’s not that the cast underperforms. Far from it — they all show up, they all deliver. The problem is that the script doesn’t trust them with complexity. In a show about power struggles, the supporting players are relegated to chess pieces that Noyonika either protects or sacrifices.

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A Legal Drama Without The Law

One of the strangest ironies of ‘The Trial’ is its refusal to stay inside the courtroom. For a series that claims to be about legal battles, very little of the tension comes from actual arguments of law. Anyone who has sat through Indian legal dramas like ‘Criminal Justice’ or even Bollywood’s ‘Pink’ knows the thrill of sharp cross-examinations, the morally grey space lawyers occupy, the drama of loopholes in a country where justice is often delayed and denied.

But here, cases dissolve outside court — in hallways, bedrooms, or during impassioned conversations. Verdicts often feel like afterthoughts, with emotions carrying more weight than evidence. The result is a show that feels closer to ‘Anupamaa’ in a black blazer than to ‘Pink’ or ‘Section 375’. For a generation that has watched real Indian courtrooms become spaces of media trials, delayed hearings, and political interference, ‘The Trial’ had a chance to bite into uncomfortable truths. Instead, it chooses safe sentimentality.

Pacing Problems, Tonal Confusion

Six episodes should have meant a tight, taut ride. Instead, the narrative drags in places where it should sprint. The season teases big developments — political vendettas, marital betrayal, ethical compromises — but rarely follows through with the punch they deserve. Twists arrive telegraphed rather than shocking, and subplots fizzle out rather than ignite.

Tonally, the show can’t decide what it wants to be. At times it leans into political commentary, suggesting a critique of India’s increasingly murky relationship between law and power. At others, it slips into family melodrama, with overlong confrontations about trust, betrayal, and motherhood. When it moralises, it does so with the heavy hand of a primetime serial, robbing the narrative of nuance.

Should You Watch It?

If you’re a Kajol fan, the answer is yes. Her performance alone carries the show, and she makes even the most predictable beats compelling. If you enjoyed Season 1, you’ll find continuity here, with Noyonika evolving into a more assertive, more complicated figure. The political subplot, though underdeveloped, gives occasional sparks of intrigue.

But if you came hoping for India’s answer to ‘The Good Wife’ or even a homegrown legal drama that interrogates the system with sharpness, you’ll leave disappointed. The Indian justice system is ripe with stories — endless adjournments, corruption, gender bias, media sensationalism — and ‘The Trial’ had the canvas to explore them. Instead, it opts for broad strokes of family melodrama, missing the chance to be the courtroom thriller India deserves.

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The Verdict

The Trial: Season 2 is not guilty of being unwatchable — Kajol makes sure of that. But it’s guilty of underutilising its premise and dodging the very courtroom drama it promises. In the end, it’s a hung verdict: a season that entertains in patches but fails to deliver the knockout blow.

Rating: 2.5/5

Image courtesy: IMDb

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