Rating : 4.2/5
Genre : Contemporary
Year : 2020
Episodes : 8
Running time : 35 minutes (per episode)
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Director : Smriti Mundhra
Cast : Sima Taparia
Kid rating : G
The big fat Indian wedding has been immortalized in many, many Bollywood films. A lot of them are love stories which end up with band-baaja-baarat – colorful, vibrant, energetic shaadis with music, dancing and good food; a natural crowd-puller and great for the TRPs. Recently Amazon Prime cashed in on this phenomena with the very successful (and non-reality) “Made In Heaven” – about 2 wedding planners planning expensive weddings for the richie-rich (where is Season 2 btw?). So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we now have Netflix streaming a reality show based on the arranged marriage.
It goes thusly – Sima Taparia is a matchmaker traipsing across India and the US meeting “girls” and “boys” and gathering “biodatas”. After meeting her clients and their mummies and daddies Sima suggests potential matches – girl and boy meet, and if it clicks there is the shehnai etc. If not, no harm done, Sima simply offers more options, and we move on.
Weddings are nice and all, but the real oomph of the show comes from the matrimony-seeking candidates. Director Mundhra does a great job of bringing out personalities, and luckily there are a couple of folks we can root for. It is also interesting to see the reactions and views of all the folks surrounding the candidates – the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc – because in true-blue desi fashion everyone’s involved in choosing the one.
The show is very realistic – this is actually how it is. Every one really does want a tall, fair and slim girl, as Taparia comments wryly. You get a good dose of patriarchal desi mores. There’s independent-minded Ankita who’s having a hard time netting a good one – and is told by the matchmaker that she needs to be “flexible” and ready for “compromise”. And then there’s Akshay who has several women and their families vying for the match even though he says “My mom is literally what I want to be looking at in my wife.”
Twitter is abuzz and there are already memes galore about Indian Matchmaking. It is a hit, as it should be. It is engrossing, slick and well-made, and offers up reality with a dollop of good humor. I loved the HGTV – House Hunters style requirement listings for the desired candidate 🙂 bulleted and everything! I wish that Indian Matchmaking had taken some of the stories to completion instead of just hinting at marital bliss, but possibly we’ll get closure in the future seasons.
Highly recommended.
