Series Review : Made In Heaven
Aired on : Amazon Prime (2019-)
My Rating : 9 out of 10
Amazon Prime may have had long duration TV series from India for some time now, but I guess this series was much more heavily promoted with ads on Facebook etc. It caught my attention, and I am glad it did. This is a brilliantly made series, except … well, more about that later.
From what I can tell from a distance, Indian Weddings are getting more and more lavish, extravagant and expensive. The ceremonies are getting very elaborate, and with that comes the need for the wedding planners and the entire cottage industry it spawns. The two main protagonists of this series, Tara Khanna (Sobhita Dhulipala) and Karan Mehra (Arjun Mathur) run a wedding planning agency. Each of the 9 episodes, tells a story of a wedding they help plan, each time with new characters. There are a handful of recurring characters, some employees of their agency, some their relatives and friends. Since each episode brings a new mini-story, it’s hard to give a short synopsis of the entire series. But that’s exactly where the series starts showing its brilliance right from the first episode.
Superficially, each episode is about a new wedding. And yes, each wedding poses different planning challenges. These are interesting, entertaining and to some extent informative. The production quality is exquisite. This must have been an expensive series to produce. Even the music is good, which generally I don’t expect from a TV series. As good as these wedding stories are, the real focus is not on the show-off of costumes and jewelry. Social commentary, (which I must stress is not just marriage related) is smoothly and unobtrusively sprinkled, all throughout the series. At times it’s poignant, at times it induces chuckles and at times it’s saddening. The blending is top class, and the reasons for it are - the acting and the script.
The casting is fabulous, and that’s where I guess half the job is done. They have picked the perfect actors to cast in the respective roles. Arjun Mathur and Sobhita Dhulipala get the most screen time, and adeptly carry their difficult roles. Of other prominent characters, I was impressed by the understated performance of Shashank Arora (as Kabir). Every other recurring character, such as Jim Sarbh (as Adil Khanna) and Shivani Raghuvanshi (as Jazz) has given a very natural, believable performance. The series also scores big when it comes to casting new characters every episode - Neena Gupta, Deepti Nawal, Vinay Pathak, Vijay Razz are some of the most able actors to grace different episodes.
Weaving all these characters together is the script - and in my opinion the single most brilliant aspect of this series. I say that because of the structure and the screenplay. The credit, it seems, is jointly shared by Zoya Akhtar, Reema Kagti and Alankrita Shrivastava. First, each episode, in addition to the wedding story, also advances the story of the characters, especially of the two main protagonists, Tara and Karan. This advancement comes from events happening in the current timeline, as well as relevant flashbacks from their respective past. The sequencing and arrangement of these 3 strands take the series from a “very good” to “great” on the artistic scale. Add to that the nuanced screenplay. For example, often, the camera moves horizontally to a character, whose facial expressions say a lot more about the situation than what dialogues can ever convey. This subtle approach is what makes me say that this is a brilliantly made series. Well … almost.
Now to address the elephant in the room. For all the subtleties that the writers have shown to be greatly capable at, those are thrown out of the window when it comes to showing sex, and specifically gay sex. This must have been a conscious decision and as a viewer, I completely disagree with. This much explicitness, and in this copious quantity can never be necessary for pure artistic reasons. I am sure, the prospect of controversy, couldn’t have escaped such a smart team of people. If it was done to show how bold they are, I must say, yes, I got that the first time, the second time, and definitely the third time, and I was disgusted to get so many more reminders. Yes, you all are very bold and provocative, we all agree, here is your certificate, but can you please put less emphasis on the soft-porn material next time? You do not need to open the doors of every bedroom to shine justifiable light on what happens behind them. Hints often are far more effective. The series is totally on the right side of social history, but on the completely wrong side of the presentation style.
So yes, I recommend this series with that big caveat of a paragraph above. I fast forwarded those scenes, and watched the rest of it because the rest was cinema (or TV) at its finest. Needless to say, this is not for kids, and I think, not even for many adults. For others who can stomach the crudeness, or can ignore it, this is a must watch.
