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Tuesday, April 23, 2019

The surprisingly good series on wedding planners in India - Made in Heaven

The Indian miniseries streaming on Amazon Prime, Made in Heaven (2019), at first seems as if it's an escapee from the Bravo channel - a 9-episode series about a team of wedding planners who cater to the wealthiest of Delhi society w/ their gorgeous but completely over-the-top celebrations and ceremonies - colorful, musical, well choreographed, extravagant in every way - but we quickly see that it's far more than a lifestyles of the rich fantasy indulgence: There's a terrific and compelling through story that makes us think of the class structure in India and all that it still entails and the struggle in India, and by extension elsewhere, for the rights of the homosexuals not only to marry - we're not there yet in India - but to live their lives in peace in a tolerant (ofrat least indifferent) society. In essence, series creators Zoya Akhtar and Rema Kagi (along w/ writer Alankrita Shrivastava) tell of a young man (who is gay) and a woman (who is from a poor background and has married into the family of a leading industrialist) set of the eponymous wedding-planning agency; in each episode they take on a new client, and over the course of the series we see, through the work of their agency, many facets of contemporary life in India, in particular the clash between tradition and the lives of contemporary, somewhat Westernized, highly educated youth. We also see from the two principals a personal struggle: Tara's trying to hold onto her marriage in the face of gross infidelity; Karan's struggle w/ this homosexuality (including painful back-story flashbacks to his youth), which puts him in the unexpected, dangerous (and bad for business, potentially) in the position of public advocate for the LGBTQ rights. (Looking these up, Tara is played by the beautiful Sobhita Dhulipala; Karan by the excellent Arjun Mathur). Literally all of the secondary characters present strong performances, giving us a great panoramic sense of life in a changing culture. (There are some similarities in structure to the excellent French series, Call My Agent, with its focus on life in a business that caters to the privileged and self-involved, with each episode focused on a new "client.") Looking forward to season 2, apparently in production.

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