Rating: 5/10
Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy was a well-received and a highly lauded book. The decision to adapt it into an OTT series came out in September 2019 and there was a flurry of excitement, all thanks to the popular star cast that the makers– the great Mira Nair, had decided to bring onboard.
Cast
A Suitable Boy’s casting directors Dilip Shankar, Nandini Shrikent and Karan Mally did a fantabulous job of getting an illustrious and talented star cast that included Ishaan Khatter and Tanya Maniktala in the lead. If anything, the supporting cast was just as good with Tabu, Rasika Duggal, Ram Kapoor, Vijay Raaz, Vinay Pathak, Namit Das, Ranvir Shorey, Randip Hudda, and Shahan Goswami. Well, one would not be at fault if they thought that this was, by far, the best OTT series of the year. Well, if you are one of them, be prepared to have your heart broken because the fault is not in the stars but with the direction and screenplay.
Review
For starters, A Suitable Boy is set in the 1950s India, just after the country’s independence from the British. Well, what strikes you (annoyingly enough) in the very first scene of the first episode is the impeccable English that the characters speak, with an accent! Well, if the show was meant to show authenticity, isn’t it too pushy for the characters, who are shown to exist in the post-independence era speak in their mother tongue or atleast Hindi. We know it is a BBC series but the real art is to adapt a story to the locale to make it plausible and believable, isn’t it? The dialogues and accents could have been made more palatable and natural. Yes, one may argue that the main characters have been shown to live in the upper-middle class strata of the society but what about the villagers speaking I broken English? I don’t deny the small bits of Hindi and Urdu that are just scattered for some flavour across the six episodes spanning over one hour each.
The second thing that strikes you about the show well into the 2nd episode is how ignorant and blissfully unperturbed the characters appear in the first decade following the British era when the country was actually ripped off its soul. There also isn’t much mention about the British atrocities, even when the entire country is gearing up for the first general election in independent India. This missing fact also shows the western prejudice considering the entire film crew was British, making a series for the British. It was so well-crafted for the foreign audiences that the in the very first scene of the show, you notice Lata, the protagonist(played by Tanya Maniktala) playing with a monkey. Well, how stereotypical does want to still portray India and Indians?
Without giving away the plot( not that there is a strong one there), the story through the six episodes shows Lata’s mother looking for the most suitable boy for her, while there is a parallel track that shows Lata’s brother-in-law(played by Ishaan Khatter) breaking taboos while romancing a much older courtesan Saeeda Bai( played by Tabu). While the story goes places throughout the episodes, there is a clear lack of vision or direction. Even with a strong star cast that the show had, it is eventually the director’s vision that brings the plot and characters to an ending. Well, things eventually fall into place in the last episode but it takes a lot to expect your audience to sit through the dreary 6 hours while you fail to pique their interest.
Takeaway
For any regular, average Indian watching this series, the glaring flaws like the use of exceptional English from fellow Indians in the post-British era, the unnecessary accent and the wavering storyline is just very unrealistic. Well, it makes you wonder whether the book in the first place was acclaimed for its plot or the author’s prolific language usage. All said and done, the series is a one-time watch for those who have read the book and are intrigued by how it has been adapted.
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