'Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives' review: Lack of drama & oomph makes it a skippable cringe rather than guilt-binge

There are reality-based shows that you love, shows that you like and shows that you binge out of habit. Then there is Karan Johar’s Dharmatic Productions' ‘Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives’, a show that so badly wants to be a guilt binge, that it even fails at being a proper cringe. 'Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives' dwindles somewhere between ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’ and ‘Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’. The four women in the series - Bhavana Panday, Maheep Kapoor, Seema Khan and Neelam Kothari Soni - are celebs, living lives beyond the media spotlight. Bhavana, Chunky Panday's wife and mother of Ananya Pandey. Maheep is the wife of Sanjay Kapoor and is part of one of Bollywood’s legacy families. Seema Khan is Sohail Khan's wife, and a fashion designer and then we have 80s popular face and now a jewellery designer Neelam who is married to actor Samir Soni. It has all the elements to attract any person invested in Bollywood (urm.. Nearly half of India) with names that are famous enough to gossip about, but not enough to gain the national spotlight. The eight-episode series wants to be flashy but lacks the sheen. It had the spunk in the idea but alas, the four wives fail to make it appetising enough. At the age and stage when Kardashian-worshippers gobble up anything and everything ‘celebrity reality’ through the internet, ‘Bollywood Wives’ is too outdated. The four women are irrelevant and remain so till the end of the show. They try so hard to be pretentious enough for the viewers to peek into their lives, but even their shallowness feels shallow. Everything feels staged, from their talks to their reactions and the extra effort put in by Karan to turn segments into an unfiltered Koffee With Karan (lite). Maheep Kapoor tries her best to be this obnoxious yet lovable leader of the clan, with her undying urge to stay millennial-friendly. However, it feels someone failed to give her a memo that not every word needs to be this loud and about to gain attention, the lazy presence of the other three anyway helps her the most to shine (if you would like to call it that). Bhavana Pandey feels like a misfit in the series. Either she is too poised or too scared to be in a show that promises to bare-all about their lives. Seema Khan is respite in a few episodes, promising to stir some drama effortlessly but then it fizzles out when focus shifts to our fourth Bollywood wife Neelam. One can say that the whole show was kind of orchestrated to bring Neelam back on the public radar. The emphasis on her getting back to acting is so much, and so staged that it felt unreal. All the conversation feels imposed, otherwise which tight-knit group of 25 years acts like they’ve never been on a vacation together and discovering (don’t confuse it with re-discovering) a different side of one another. The plus of any reality-based show is its intrigue and power to present a narrative that is glamorous yet relatable. Here, the makers have made it glamorous but forgot to make it even a bit relatable. It might have worked as a Netflix fiction show about four middle-aged women, but as a reality show, it’s just lazy and disappointing. Also see: Karan Johar strikes pose with 'Bollywood wives' as 'Fabulous Lives' premiers on Netflix The final episode is the only one where the viewer feels the magic of the show-biz and that’s because of the presence of Shah Rukh Khan and Gauri. Had the makers taken her along with the likes of Twinkle Khanna, Sussanne Khan and Malaika Arora, that would’ve made for a killer binge-show, but then that’s wishful thinking. At times the show also feels like a justification on Nepotism by the likes of Maheep who says ‘what can one do about it’ and Karan Johar trying to give it an emotional spin, making the show feel soppy rather than spunky. Honestly, as a connoisseur of cringe-binge, I had high hopes from '....Bollywood Wives' but it just failed to be ‘too bad that’s it’s good’. All this show gives you is a yawn, a dashing Shah Rukh Khan for 10 mins and an accent that comes and goes at its own convenience. Oh and also a future announcement that Neelam is coming back onscreen, most likely in some ‘Dharmatic Production’. If Karan is seriously considering making ‘Fabulous Lives’ into a franchise, it would be better to cast the kids next. They seriously felt more intriguing and interesting than their mothers, who think that hummus is the most difficult dish to make on this earth. To be honest more drama happened in my life while watching the show, than in the lives of four women combined. If that doesn’t speak B-O-R-I-N-G, I don’t know what else will.

'Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives' review: Lack of drama & oomph makes it a skippable cringe rather than guilt-binge

Fabulous Lives

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Sameeksha Dandriyal

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