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Shantaram season 2 - release date of new episodes
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Shantaram 2 season - the exact release date of the new series, the trailer of the series, interesting facts, plot description, actors
In October 2022, the first chapter of the story, based on the novel by Gregory David Roberts, was released. And almost immediately, the audience asked questions: when will the 2nd season of the Shantaram series be released? Is it worth waiting for a sequel? We share known information and our own hypotheses.
Now literally everyone is discussing the release date for season 2 of Shantaram, which has not been announced and will not be announced anymore, since Apple decided to end the story on season 1! There will be no continuation on Apple!
About the series Shantaram
On October 14, Shantaram, starring Charlie Hunnam, finally launched on Apple TV+, a series based on the book of the same name by Gregory David Roberts. Why “finally” I will explain a little further, but it’s better to start with the introductory data - why it’s worth discussing at all.
The novel "Shantaram" is written from the perspective of a hero who regularly changes names (let's take his first fake name, Lindsay, for simplicity). He ends up in an Australian prison for a serious crime, but then escapes, moves to India and starts a new life there. Lin helps the locals, but regularly gets involved in dangerous cases.
Shantaram is one of the most sensational and controversial books of the XNUMXst century. More than six million copies have been sold worldwide. Some pathetically call this volume of almost a thousand pages "the main novel of the XXI century." Plus hundreds of quotes on the Internet, motifs and other elements of a cult work.
On the other hand, many people laugh at the popularity of the book. Firstly, "Shantaram", based on the biography of the author himself, is literally filled with narcissism. Although, strictly speaking, many books of former criminals sin with this - remember at least “The Moth” by Henri Charrière (in the new film adaptation, by the way, Hunnam also played), even though “The Black Bird” by James Keane.
Each time, the protagonist is a good guy through and through, who was just unlucky, but he was completely reborn and started a new life. In the case of Roberts, however, he also acts from the position of a guru who teaches this very life to others.
And secondly, "Shantaram" is filled to capacity with all sorts of ornate expressions, in the style: "You can live in the city, holding your wounded heart and soul in a fist, but in the village they should openly glow in your eyes."
You probably already understood that I am not a fan of the book. To be honest, I read it quite a long time ago - about ten years ago. But even then the morality that it is better to be free than not free, and it is better to help people than to kill them, seemed to me, to put it mildly, simple.
However, I was still looking forward to the series. Just because in the screen version, the shortcomings of the book could fade into the background, leaving the focus on an exciting adventure drama.
But it took a very long time to wait. You can not even take the very old talk about a full-length film adaptation (Johnny Depp wanted to do it). The development of the series based on Shantaram was announced already in 2018. In September 2019, it became known that Charlie Hunnam would play the lead role. And then some wild pandemonium began.
Filming began with showrunner Eric Warren Singer ("American Hustle"). But then it turned out that he only had the scripts for the first two episodes ready, which is why the work had to be stopped. Singer was fired, and in the meantime, the monsoon and rainy season began in India.
Steve Lightfoot (Hannibal, The Punisher) was appointed as the new showrunner, but things stalled for almost a year. And in addition to all the problems, a pandemic began, and it already seemed that the series would almost never end.
However, Shantaram came out - on October 14, Apple TV + showed three episodes at once, and in total the season will include 12 hour-long episodes. And the main thing you need to know: the film adaptation turned out to be as controversial as the book.
Perhaps the main problem is that the admiration of the hero and the idealization of his image have not gone anywhere. For starters, Charlie Hunnam was cast for the role of Lean - compare him with photographs of the real Roberts. Understandably, most viewers applaud adaptive appeal, which is a good thing—we all love a screen that's nice to look at. But such a move does not fit well with the image itself.
Apparently, the hero should be a kind of "boyfriend", charming and easy to get acquainted with, but rather simple. To believe in the “simplicity” of a person with perfect abs and smooth skin, who even has (supposedly) dirty hair is always neatly styled, and whose voice sounds like a lullaby is not an easy task.
Even worse, the character's character is worked out very superficially. It is trite "a person on the way to correction." In each series, the main character gives out some kind of wise thought (so pathos ornate thoughts, alas, have not gone away either), in each series he plans to escape, but in the end he nobly stays to help others.
The book itself has long been criticized for outdated stereotypes: a white man, with the support of a stupid but loyal local, saves the inhabitants of a poor country. But the creators of the series obviously did not read this criticism, because they exaggerate the beauty and nobility of the protagonist even in comparison with the novel.
And if this is how they treated the central character, there is no need to talk about the rest. Side storylines and secondary characters are literally a set of clichés: from a fatal dangerous beauty and an American drug addict to a French homosexual. And the conditional antagonists at the beginning of the season are reminiscent of the characters of the old James Bond films - a kind of operetta villains who send suitcases of money to officials and speak to opponents in a quiet, scary voice.
Perhaps this would not be so conspicuous if Shantaram were made into a more dynamic adventure story. After all, films about beautiful characters who survive in the poor areas of Asia are quite popular so far. But the film adaptation is trying too hard to follow the original - the first season lasts as much as 12 hours, and it does not fit the entire novel.
That is why every hero and every event is given unreasonably much time. The characters have endless conversations about nothing (but supposedly with philosophical overtones, they say “the whole world is an illusion”), the villains share zones of influence, the main character saves the sick with all his might, expats suffer from love and depression.
But okay, in the end, I must say that everything is not so terrible. Watching Shantaram is certainly not the worst hour of my life. The series is very well filmed. Perfectly staged picture is only occasionally interrupted by ragged editing in a few action scenes.
Hunnam does his best to play without exaggeration, sometimes expressing emotions only with his eyes - and he does it very well. And the entourage of India itself is shown very atmospherically, even though the streets are littered too neatly.
Trailer for the series "Shantaram"
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