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Family Man Season 3: A Little Less Fun, Still A Whole Lot Of Fun

The new instalment of the homegrown spy series is its plainest yet — leaning on franchise familiarity without fully owning it. Even at its weakest, Family Man remains ahead of most streaming fare.

Ishita+Sengupta

Nov 22, 2025

Promo poster for Family Man season 3.

WHEN Family Man dropped in 2019, a new language in long-form storytelling was born. The Raj & DK series took a regular spy story, reiterations of which clogged pop culture, and grounded it in a way that felt both radical and inevitable. In their telling, the narrative shed its flamboyant excess and probed more mundane queries, like what if the spy has a family? And, what do they (not) tell them? Informed by this, the show’s leading man has a parallel personal life with his professional commitments, and the crack was where the story lay, as did the humour.

Across the first season, Family Man carried a sardonic tone, aided by its wry protagonist Srikant Tiwari (Manoj Bajpayee), who carried the weight of both security concerns and personal banter. By the second season, it became a hallmark, and so did other things. Srikant’s sparring chemistry with his colleague, the single and pining JK (Sharib Hashmi always watchable), his expletives-laced dialogues and poetic delivery, his constant lies to his wife, Suchitra (the ever-terrific Priyamani) and family, the mounting national threats to India from neighbouring countries, combatted by Srikant and others in his agency, Threat Analysis and Surveillance Cell (TASC). And the craft. Across the two seasons, the makers went for broke with oners. Season three also opens with an extraordinary one-shot, as if hinting at a continuation when it is anything but.

The latest instalment of the homegrown spy series is its most plain. Dialogues sing less; the brewing resentment in Srikant’s marriage is cracked open for resolution, he is no longer lying to his wife and grown-up children, and even his verbal duels with JK, many of which have been hallmarked as meme-gold, have dimmed. It is also the most dense. Raj & DK, with Sumar Kumar (writers who, with Tusshar Seyth, have directed the episodes ), shift the narrative to North East India and with every episode, even as the meaning translates, the broader lines keep getting more blurred. The action zig-zags from Kohima to Aizawl, Delhi to London, with the familiar Islamabad recurring in bits.

The direct upshot of this is a season half as fun as its previous iterations. Every time a scene ends with Bajpayee’s exasperated face without a familiar line, it is reminiscent of watching a love story once the honeymoon period is over. But even at its lowest, Family Man manages to tower over most streaming work today; such charm also encourages making a case for it.

Before The Family Man season 3, a recap of Manoj Bajpayee's previous seasons | Funny and dangerous moments edition

Much like the last season of Paatal Lok the premise here, too, is stacked with metaphors. Major cities in the North East become a surrogate to highlight the outsider status assigned to minorities — culturally, in this case, if not due to religion — as external forces (within and outside the country) use them as pawns to further their own agenda. Centre’s fraught relationship with this part of India also highlights a Kashmir connection, even as the literal readings hold true on their own accord.

Family Man opens with the possibility of a peace deal being signed by Prime Minister Basu (Seema Biswas) and the rebel leaders of the North East. Srikant and his senior, Kulkarni (Dalip Tahil), are sent, as Rukma (Jaideep Ahlawat), an assassin hired by a nameless collective pushing India to sign an arms deal, trails them and launches an attack. Only Srikant survives, and this taints him as a possible traitor who could have orchestrated the whole thing and even caused the death of Kulkarni.

Despite the larger lines taking time to fall into place (moneyed people pushing India to war for commercial benefit is a timely intervention), it is what happens inside that is more interesting. Take, for instance, Srikant and his family being tagged as anti-national through the design of IT-cells. Some nuance helps. From the start, through its leading man, the series represented a kind of old-world patriotism where those tasked with safeguarding the country were depicted as selfless, if not an uncritical bunch. They are flesh and blood, prone to conditioning (Srikant is also a soft patriarch), and duty-bound. In today’s India, they are anachronistic and would be termed as anti-nationals. In a quieter scene, Srikant compares himself to Kareem Bhatt, the Muslim boy who was killed by him and the TASC team on the assumption that he was a terrorist.

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Therefore, the change in Srikant is only evolution, as if for a man like him, that is the only possibility. With his kids grown up, he is thrown off guard by their Gen Z lingo (Bajpayee is just excellent in these moments as the makers mine his expressions for comedy), confused with pronouns, but no less affectionate. He even looks at his wife, attending a debate on TV, and praises her loudly. An earlier Srikant would scoff more, but he is quieter now, even disillusioned as he takes a beat and looks back at his family, carrying on (even) without him.

He doesn’t tally the many ways in which the nation has failed him, but the antagonists in this season of Family Man comprise those who do. Rukma, a former army guy, has no allegiance. He will go where there is money. Ditto for the rest. Their nationalism is transactional, hinging on wanting something back from the country for their service; the failure of which pushed them to the other side. The show also humanises them by depicting them as flawed people capable of care.

Having said that, the exposition is troubling as characters often sit and explain things. The actors, however, are consistently excellent. Ahlawat is one of our few greats, and his visceral performance, effortlessly straddling concern and cruelty, feels like a privilege to witness. There is a moment when he asks a child to repeat the orders he has fed and then, on hearing something, his expression alters — astonishing. Bajpayee is familiar but sublime. As Srikant Tiwari, he has always been this tough but frail man; his physicality inhabiting the demands of his position. But this time, he appears almost broken and on the verge of being defeated. A good actor can translate the subtext of the writing material, but a transcendental performer conveys the context of the world. Bajpayee’s dented shoulders imply the burden of being a patriot in the crowd of nationalists.

There are more changes. It ends at a cliffhanger, a standard practice, but also one that gives a sense of incompleteness to the show. Even the two standard oners established in the past are not replicated. The second episode ends with an astounding shoot-out, stitched together to give an illusion of an unbroken shot. But it is not one. That the latest instalment keeps playing on the familiarity of the franchise without committing to it, often cutting a scene before Srikant can curse, speaks of the impossibility of pursuing the past when the present doesn’t hold. Every attempt with failure, however, reveals a crack, and this is where the new season of Family Man lies now, so does the new India.

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