A uncommon filmmaker who understands the heartbeat of heartland politics, Prakash Jha returns this week to his Raajneeti universe alongside the Ganga with a flawed but participating tackle benevolence. The series Sankalp stands out for its mental ambitions and powerful performances.
It succeeds as a reflective political drama rooted in ethical ambiguity, however its bloated narrative construction and lack of visible innovation forestall it from turning into addictive.
In an period of flashy spectacles, Jha sticks to a conventional, issue-driven model, prioritising realism and complexity, although some strategies of portraying energy corridors and the dynamics between kingmakers and rebellious disciples now really feel clichéd within the sequence format.
Inspired by the Chanakya-Chandragupta dynamic, Sankalp follows Kanhaiyalal, popularly known as Ma’at Saab (Nana Patekar), a revered guru in Patna who runs a gurukul-style faculty and an UPSC teaching centre, strategically grooming loyal college students who rise to highly effective bureaucratic positions to tackle the entrenched, corrupt system.
Tensions escalate when his protégé, IPS officer Aditya Verma (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), begins to query his mentor’s manipulative strategies amid a brewing political rivalry with Delhi’s Chief Minister, Prashant Singh (Sanjay Kapoor), and his strategist, Waqar (Neeraj Kabi).
As outdated betrayals, ideological clashes, and energy struggles floor, a tense battle over loyalty, revenge, and management exams the boundaries of mentorship and ambition, revealing self-interest and politics in philanthropy.
Those who have watched Raajneeti would keep in mind Patekar’s flip as a quiet strategist who holds command from behind the scenes. Jha, together with creator- author Reshu Nath, appears to have constructed on this character to create the political puppeteer in Sankalp. It reminds certainly one of Jayaprakash Narayan, who mentored a brand new era of political leaders within the Nineteen Seventies to tackle the Congress, lots of whom stay lively in politics. Ma’at Saab does one thing comparable within the paperwork as Jha reimagines political succession in a democracy the place the laal batti of bureaucrats and technocrats is more and more turning into the guiding gentle.
However, maybe in a bid to play protected, Jha doesn’t enable his protagonist to purpose large. He simply desires to alter the Delhi State authorities. It is a low-hanging fruit for a ten-episode sequence starring powerhouses corresponding to Patekar, Ayub, and Kabi.
Moreover, after constructing a riveting world stuffed with intrigue, some abnormal, if not lacklustre, writing disappoints. When Kapoor retains asking what’s taking place, with a preferred pejorative sandwiched in between, he appears to be expressing the viewers’s desperation at being caught amid overcrowded, underdeveloped subplots.
The narrative stalls, with repetitive scenes that echo themes of energy, loyalty, and manipulation however fail to advance the story. Twists are sometimes inconsistent, and a few character arcs are left underdeveloped or unresolved, contributing to a bloated slightly than layered plot.
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What retains one is the bigger imaginative and prescient of depicting a world coated in shades of grey, the place reality shifts with perspective. Dotted with each sharp and insipid dialogue (Chandan Kumar), the sequence avoids shiny escapism and questions society’s fascination with unquestioned affect and straightforward heroes or villains. It probes the dad and mom’ function within the much-lauded gurukul mannequin, with the feminine characters including layers of loyalty, vulnerability, and consequence, although they operate extra as enablers or quiet challengers than as autonomous forces.
Written with Patekar in thoughts, Sankalp advantages from the grasp actor’s magnetic presencer. Like a coiled spring, he brings out the quiet authority of Ma’at Saab whereas giving the viewers a way of menace and tyrannical instincts that such a persona holds beneath layers of calm and heat.
Sankalp is at the moment streaming on Amazon MX Player
Published – March 12, 2026 04:15 pm IST
