With the first season of She, many felt that writer-showrunner Imtiaz Ali squandered away the chance of telling a compelling story of a woman who discovers the power of her sexuality. Does the second season fare better? The Aaditi Pohankar-led crime drama, which dropped online over the weekend, has received a mixed response so far. Ali says that over the past decade, the social media buzz gave him a fair idea of whether his offerings struck a chord with the audience. “Even if I don’t go looking to find out how my show or movie has fared, [the reviews] come to me. I get to know that this is what they thought about Tamasha [2015], or this is how people are reacting to She. It’s not a mechanised or a calibrated process; it’s instinctive. Other than that, Netflix has the data to tell us how the show has done.”

Imtiaz Ali