City of Dreams Season 3 (26 May 2023)

Genre: Political Drama Crime Thriller 

Channel: Disney+ Hotstar

Language: Hindi

Season: 3

No. of Episodes: 9

Running Time: 39-50 minutes

Writer: Nagesh Kukunoor, Rohit Banawlikar

Director: Nagesh Kukunoor

Cast: Priya Bapat, Eijaz Khan, Atul Kulkarni, Sachin Pilgaonkar, Sushant Singh, Rannvijay Singha, Divya Seth, Sandeep Kulkarni, Flora Saini, Siddharth Chandekar, Adinath Kothare

Introduction:

Woven around the power struggle within the prime members of MJS, the leading political party of Maharashtra, their dark & dirty methods and conspiracies, along with their human side, plus the usual police and drug mafia fiasco, City of Dreams Season 3 is a compelling watch with obvious similarities with the real world personalities and happenings. 

Plot:

Before revealing the storyline of Season 3, let's do a quick recap of two preceeding seasons. 

Season 1 (May 2019) was about - assassination attempt on Mumbai’s political stalwart Ameya Rao Gaikwad 'Saheb' (Atul Kulkarni), the leader of MJS Party, which left him paralyzed; his dynamic daughter Poornima Gaikwad's (Priya Bapat) tough crusade to occupy the vacant seat even at the cost of assassinating her brother Ashish Gaikwad (Siddharth Chandekar) and 'Encounter' SI Wasim Khan's (Eijaz Khan) unofficial hunt for Ameya Rao's shooter and the concerned perpetrators. 

Towards the end of the season, Poornima manages to position herself as the next Chief Minister of Maharashtra!! 

Season 2 (Jul 2021) was a mish-mash of several events happening together in multiple character's lives.

Poornima took over as the CM and unleashed hell on Mehka Infra for poor construction and lost lives. She met Jagan Hejmadi 'Anna' (Sushant Singh) to rescue Purushottam (Sandeep Kulkarni), whose mystery woman (Flora Saini) was eventually revealed. She challenged Mahesh Arawle (Adinath Kothare) to a live debate and eventually met him in secrecy. Also, she prepared to inaugurate the Mumbai metro project. 

Ameya Rao came out of his convalescence and immediately started regrouping his people and working towards overthrowing Poornima. 

Towards the end of the season, Poornima's son Amit got killed in a bomb blast meant to disrupt her rally!!

Season 3 starts with Poornima being voluntarily MIA and incommunicado for three plus months on account of being unable to handle Amit's death. 

The interim CM and concerned Ameya Rao asks the reinstated Wasim to locate and bring her back, who finally tracks her in Bangkok in a dazed and self punishing mode, both mentally and physically. 

Wasim helps her to get on terms with her loss, give it the required closure albeit as much possible and gain back her normalcy. 

She returns back to Mumbai and with some initial difficulty, resumes back her CM duties.

Wasim thereafter joins the Drugs Task Force and starts making the concerned strategies and arrests there. 

Vibha (Divya Seth) the leader of the ruling party at the Centre wants to topple Ameya Rao Gaikwad and his legacy in Maharashtra for both her personal history with 'Saheb' and political ambition.

Jagdish Gaurav (Sachin Pilgaonkar), the preceeding CM and right hand man of 'Saheb' offers his alliance to Vibha and provides her some secret information against the Gaikwads plus MLAs that he breaks from MJS, so as to cancel the part's majority in the Legislative Assembly and form a new alliance government in the state. 

Alongside, he carefully maintains the old loyalist and family man card with the Gaikwad duo with full subservience. 

Media mogul Adarsh (Rannvijay Singha) is on Vibha's side for brownie points with the Centre and uses his news segment on television to render a flurry of negative news against the Gaikwads, specially targeting Poornima's Bangkok escapade. 

Eventually, the father-daughter duo, Ameya Rao and Poornima unite to protect the Gaikwad legacy in the state politics.

Poornima handles all allegations and questions with strong logic, intelligence and oodles of confidence. 

Jagdish makes a good headway in breaking the party but Ameya Rao and Poornima along with other party loyalists are able to control the damage on time by striking political & financial deals with a couple of important party members, resulting their come back to MJS, along with many others. 

Towards the end of the season, three of the leading characters are dead!! 

Watch the series to find who and how. 

Analysis:

Season 3 is inarguably the best of all the 3 seasons of City of Dreams webseries, specially in scripting and direction. 

The series has a clear focus, good direction and all the five lead artists have performed exceedingly well. They are - Priya Bapat, Atul Kulkarni, Eijaz Khan, Sachin Pilgaonkar and Sushant Singh. 

Priya Bapat is actually the main protagonist here and shares amazing chemistry with both Atul Kulkarni and Eijaz Khan. She is clearly the discovery of the season on nationwide OTT platform. Her lady like gentle smile and demure body language alongwith her leader like steely gaze is quite impressive. 

Eijaz Khan has got the role of his life and he has ably dug his teeth deep into it. He looks, walks and talks like an encounter specialist with strong loyalty to the lady CM.

Atul Kulkarni has well morphed himself into a loving and proud father of the CM, with his calculations & networking side intact. He easily switches between both the body languages. It's a treat to watch him act. 

Sachin Pilgaonkar has well carried off the complex portrayal of a party changing conniving politician who wears a permanent loyal and indulging albeit deceitful smile (or smirk). Actually, it's quite refreshing to see him in such an avatar. 

Sushant Singh looks quite believable as the stoic and ruthless Anna of minimum words. He has the minimum dialogues and still he has made his mark. 

Divya Seth and Rannvijay Singha in their relatively smaller roles are also impressive.

All the other actors have also acted well. 

Production and costume designs are bang on. Editing is impressive. 

Conclusion:

Blurring the fine line between right and wrong, the movie is a heady cocktail of political conspiracies and turbulent relationships alongwith a drug mafia angle. 

It is beautifully written, wonderfully directed and excellently acted by the aforementioned five artists. 

Do watch it.