“Dukan phir se khul rahi hai…”

As Aarya Sareen raises a toast in anger, helplessness, fear and utmost strength during her party, Sushmita Sen basically announces back to the entire world boldly that she is back in the business and how! Without any doubts, it is the most definitive performance of her career, and she nails down the complex concoction of a varied range of emotions of Aarya in every single scene. This is classic Sushmita Sen at her resilient, fearless, terrified, graceful and affectionate best, and helps raising an already solid writing of a highly engaging show to the next level. Sushmita with Aarya, and Aarya with Sushmita, flies and soars, in all her shades of a mourning wife, a helpless but super protective mother, a smart and sharp thinker, a vulnerable woman, and a go getter, never losing her focus or poise in her messy and challenging journey.

Continue reading “AARYA : The Rise of the Phoenix” →

The new season of Little Things, that takes forward the journey of Dhruv and Kavya on a more grounded and realistic journey, grows wider in perspective and leaves behind deeper impressions. Unlike the previous seasons that dealt more with the live-in couple exploring life with and in each other, this time around life takes them long distance, and that possibly gives them a breather to look outward, rediscover themselves in their individual worlds, take them back to their roots on what shaped them to be the people they are today, and find their own happy places and comfort zones. That doesn’t mean though that the show achieves that at the expense of the chemistry between Dhruv and Kavya. If anything, we only find them more matured and stronger to handle spaces, people and things of past and present that life has offered them over time, that in turn make them more lovable individually and together.

Continue reading “LITTLE THINGS S3 : Wide Perspectives, Deep Impressions” →

‘Unbelievable‘ is brilliant! Do not miss it! The way this police procedural dives deep into the psychology of rape victims, detectives, and serial abusers is very intense and highly moving!

Continue reading “UNBELIEVABLE : Believe. Show you care.” →

It is not just an aesthetic differentiation that the new TVF original Kota Factory is possibly the first black and white Indian web series. Created by Saurabh Sharma, it uses the color scheme as the very handle to tell the world that the dreams of millions of students (and their parents) every year to crack IIT or equivalent is not all back and white, but a lot of grey in between. This well conceptualized show, that has been releasing one episode every week since the last three weeks exposes the dark shades of ambition vs. ability, and how the pressure often takes an irreconcilable toll on the young minds tainting them for life.

Continue reading “KOTA FACTORY : The Grey Dreams” →

Laakhon Mein Ek Season 2, as created by Biswa Kalyan Rath, and directed by Abhishek Sengupta, is a grounded tale of suburban and rural India that exposes the deep rooted corruption and process inefficiencies of our medical institutions. At another level, it is also the coming of age story of a brave, young doctor, who is punished with a rural posting in a hostile village, and how she practically turns things around towards good without differentiating between duty and responsibility unlike what her seniors preach her to practice.

Continue reading “LAAKHON MEIN EK : Indeed Stands Out” →

Let me begin with the confession that I had no idea about the Tripling world until very recently. I didn’t watch the Season 1 when it came out about three years back at a time when TVF show concepts were at their prime. It was only after Season 2 was launched and there was a buzz around it, that I watched both the seasons back to back. Of course it was the fresh, grounded and yet fun writing of Season 1 that ensured that I hung around and also completed Season 2 in one go. However, as it happens with multiple series, Tripling Season 2 isn’t even quarter as good as Season 1. In fact, its pretty bad in my opinion!

Continue reading “TRIPLING SEASON 2 : Loses its way terribly” →

“This crime is not just heinous, its insanity!” – That is how DCP South Delhi Vartika Chaturvedi expresses her shock and agony over one of the most gruesome and inhuman acts of violence of this decade, and one where she is now in charge to nab the criminals before they go untraceable. Delhi Crime is the retelling of the infamous Delhi gang rape case of 2012 that had scarred the nation permanently, this time through the lens of case files of the Delhi Police, and trying to fit itself in the broader genre of a police procedural. Scratch the surface, and it aspires to unearth a lot more.

Continue reading “DELHI CRIME : When Humanity Fights Insanity” →

“Made in Heaven believes – the wedding should celebrate the couple. The theme should tell their story. Love. Birds. Roses & Skies. Pink & Blue. Blush & Sparkle. This is your wedding”

That is the world of dreams that wedding planners Tara Khanna (Shobhita Dhulipala) and Karan Mehra (Arjun Mathur) want to sell to their clients and see it through execution. These are no ordinary clients or no ordinary weddings. These are big fat and pretentious Indian weddings in the truest sense, where wedding budgets run in crores and the profit from each sale runs in lakhs. Doesn’t matter if it pushes even the super rich families to enormous debts, there are huge obsessive egos and obnoxious societal impressions at stake. Doesn’t matter if the planners themselves are ducking their lenders (including close families) every month, or are not able to take care of the legitimate asks of their backbone breaking loyal team thereby losing them, its the world of vulgar showbiz they are in and only glitter sells. And certainly doesn’t matter, if the dreams they sell of heaven are all executed through experiences of hell, and there is abundance of cruel and ugly mess hidden under the grandeur of beauty and heaps of wealth at every layer of society.

Continue reading “MADE IN HEAVEN : Chronicles of Hell!” →