A touch frivolous but certainly not incredibly vapid
New Delhi:
Made with broad strokes, Call Me Bey, produced by Ishita Maitra, co-written with Samina Motlekar and Rohit Nair and directed by Colin D’Cunha, is not without its flashes of fun and insight.
It is another matter of territory call me bay Travers is not conducive to anything more immediate and natural than the delivery of shallow truths about life and manners and wealth and reality checks. The show does a lot, maybe a bit more, with passable flair.
Ananya Pandey is topping the eight-episode Dharmatik Entertainment-produced Prime Video India show, a social comedy about the trials and tribulations of a filthy rich girl from South Delhi who is left out in the cold and forced to fend for herself in Mumbai.
The character only sporadically pushes Pandey out of his comfort zone. But to his credit, he embraces the ample opportunity for evolution that long-form stories and assured handwriting offer him. He makes a relatable figure worth rooting for even though the show doesn’t offer much by way of enlightening epiphanies.
Bela Chowdhury aka Bey, born to wealth and married to even more wealth, there is no such thing as “too much bling”. Early in the series, his family is on the verge of bankruptcy. His marriage to the scion of a prosperous business empire saved his parents from falling into the middle class.
But when everything seems to be arranged, life takes an unexpected and unhappy turn. Bey finds herself on the side of her Richie Rich husband. All his access to money for Chawa was cut off and he was forced to leave Delhi and set himself up in Mumbai.
Do old habits die easily? Not for Bae. She does not spare herself from her obsession with designer clothes and dresses. It is not call me bay Grinds the charming heroine to such an extent that few people have to turn away day after day just to make ends meet.
Bae just doesn’t slum it out. The worst that happens to him is that he has to find a job, share a flat with a colleague, travel in an autorickshaw and eat vada-pav on the beach (but not before sanitizing the bench he sits on).
Congratulations on the casting. Ananya Pandey feeds Baye and vice versa. The hero, like a real-life star kid, is so accustomed to his uber-luxe cocoon that when he breaks out of the protective bubble created by his doting and calculative mother (Mini Mathur) and a husband (Bihan Samat) who denies him nothing but attention. Nothing, and faced with the real world, he would still be materially better off at infinitely better times than most of us.
Taking a meta dig at Ananya Pandey’s remark that became a meme and went viral, a residential complex security guard quipped that he would be happy to reach where Bey’s coercion begins. The lady’s response to that observation – where have I heard that before? – not only for a fleeting moment, the wall between fiction and reality crumbles, but also an example of the self-deprecating humor that permeates Call Me Bay.
The writing is generally brilliant and the story moves at a fair clip. People crowd around Bey as she makes her way through the rough and tumble of a city not her own. The show follows her transformation into a woman who learns to overcome adversity and obstacles and find friends, purpose and inspiration.
call me bay Alternate between agreeable airs and effortless flippants in search of a narrative middle that can hold the show together. The flow may not be consistent but the mix of drollery and seriousness works for the most part.
call me bay The final quarter turns deadly serious when the heroine takes it upon herself to expose an unholy relationship between the mainstream media and a corporate entity whose head honcho is not who he claims to be.
When Bay’s picture-perfect life is disrupted by an indiscreet act and her husband’s knee-jerk reaction to it, and she’s forced to strike out on her own, the first few episodes keep viewers invested in her plight. A hint of boredom leaves after this but it doesn’t do permanent or major damage.
As is customary in stories of this nature, it doesn’t take long for Bey to find the next soulmates who stand by her through thick and thin. Five-star hotel employee Saira Ali (Muskan Jafri) is the first. Bae presents her with an LV Sara wallet, an act that turns out to be a blessing in disguise in the long run.
Bey lands a job at a news channel without much of a struggle, where he quickly befriends a junior reporter (Niharika Leera Dutt) who knows his mind. In a few episodes, he also makes common cause with an actress (Sayani Gupta, in an extended cameo that makes a mark) who has a story to share with the world.
The girls form a coven that gives them the strength to navigate their own flaws – both Bey and Saira have serious flaws – and shrug off the arrogant ways of Satyajit Sen aka SS (Veer Das), the channel’s flagship primetime show host. He’s a douchebag who hides the stench he exudes behind a veneer of corrosive cockiness. Das’ performance is one of the highlights of the show.
Not all men around Bey are despicable louts. One of them, Neil N. (Gurfateh Peerzada), swears by the virtues of serious journalism and the sensationalism that the SS stands against. He instilled in Bay the belief that “the story is always bigger than the journalist”.
The man who sweeps Bey off her feet and causes trouble in her paradise – celebrity gym trainer Prince (Varun Sood) – doubles as a tech whiz and ethical hacker while on the rampage. She becomes his greatest ally when problems start piling up.
Someone advised Bae to turn off his TV set if “you’re looking for real journalism… it’s not on TV anymore”. Don’t know if Bae heeds that advice, but if you’re looking for something other than a few hours of steamy entertainment, call me bay May not be for you. It may be a touch trivial, but the series is certainly not irredeemably vague or empty.
