Why should I watch a show about four women who are unemployed? Karan Johar says in Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives, a reality series he’s produced about four women who do have jobs.
The Netflix show revolves around Neelam Kothari, Maheep Kapoor, Seema Khan, and Bhavana Pandey. Their names will be familiar to Bollywood minutia consumers. Kothari, the ’80s star who appeared in a series of Hindi movies with Govinda, now runs a jewelry design shop and is married to actor Samir Soni. Pandey, the wife of actor Chunkey Pandey and mother of upcoming talent Ananya Panday, has a tag of pret. Maheep Kapoor, a former model married to actor Sanjay Kapoor, also runs a candy business. Seema Khan, the wife of director and occasional actor Sohail Khan, owns a clothing boutique.
Women have known each other for a quarter of a century, they keep reminding us. The series revolves around their affection for each other and their jewel-laden adventures, balancing feigned sincerity with sincere falsehood.
Directed by Uttam Domale, the eight-episode series contains scripted situations that resemble flight-on-the-wall conversations and direct-on-camera interviews. The women, flawlessly waxed, combed and dressed, talk about career, motherhood, husbands and friendship. They pretend to argue, compare notes on skincare and their children, and wonder if Meghan Markle and Prince Harry were right in parting ways with Buckingham Palace. Between feeding viewers the moments of guilty pleasure they’ve signed up for, the women engage in a beach cleanup, sparking a fleeting conversation about climate change.
Why so serious? Inspired by soccer player David Beckham, the women fly business class to Doha. The upscale surroundings provide a welcome escape from your own apartments and bungalows and the general misery of Mumbai (which is sought to be hidden with drone shots of the city skyline). In Doha, they make a list of the “hottest men” in show business. A man allegedly stalks Neelam, flattering and frightening her. A bare-chested French bartender materializes with cocktails.
As empty as promised and without irony as expected, the series nonetheless has something for the cheeky devotee of show business, the nepotism-obsessed troll, the popular culture scholar, and the Bollywood evidence compiler.
Despite too many episodes and a catchy feel in supposedly honest conversations, the show draws on the collective energies of its female leads. The Kothari-Kapoor-Pandey-Khan combo is absolutely comfortable with each other and completely at ease being filmed. They claim that they are very much like us, but they know that we are looking at them precisely because they are nothing like us.
Karan Johar pops up every now and then to bring a semblance of order and higher purpose to this Indian avatar of American celebrity reality TV productions. In sequences that unfold as an extension of his popular talk show. Koffee with Karan, the filmmaker organizes talks with the four women that reveal their divergent backgrounds and personalities.
Koffee with Karan He taught us that there is no point in being famous, or even half famous, if you can’t make some money. On-screen gods and goddesses were able to sell the parts of themselves that made them look mortal and allow fans a glimpse or two of their real self without revealing too much.
Steeped in show business mores and aware of their own legacies as well as their children’s future, the “Bollywood Wives” make their intentions clear. We are building our own brands here, says more than one woman. Neelam Kothari plays with the idea of a comeback. Shanaya, the daughter of Maheep and Sanjay Kapoor, who is being groomed for a film career, gets something of a test drive through her appearance on the show.
In between, significant other people, family members, and members of the broader social circle sign up for strategically placed cameos. Among the actors who have struggled in movies but are perfectly comfortable playing versions of themselves in this format are Sanjay Kapoor and Chunkey Pandey. Arjun Kapoor, desperately in need of his own outlet on a reality show, offers Maheep Kapoor’s son Jahaan, also an aspiring actor, vital lessons in handling trolls. You have prepared yourself for public consumption, says Arjun Kapoor. Stop taking yourself so seriously and go with the flow.
The biggest cameo is that of one of Bollywood’s most camera-friendly movie stars. At a party hosted by Gauri Khan, Shah Rukh Khan comes in and throws some typically warm and effusive anecdotes and the series is pulled into slavery.
Khan’s act appears to be a remake of the Zoya Akhtar movie. Luck by chance, in which he offered some good advice to a newly minted star: Never forget the friends who supported you, especially when you were a fighter. Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives you are perfectly comfortable with the first part of that advice.
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