Shubhra Gupta

Two unlikely couples find themselves in a house far away from the madding crowd in the English countryside. It’s meant to be a convivial dinner, getting to know each other better. But right from the time they are ushered in by their hosts Rohit (Arjun Mathur) and Sanya (Zora Rahman), Ira (Rasika Dugal) and Basukinath (Paresh Pahuja) sense there’s something off: a big chest, placed in the middle of the living room. It becomes an object of increasing concern: what is inside? Or is it who? Is there, shudder, a body inside?

Wedding crashers. Five star Rajasthan hotels. Brand endorsements for glittery apparel. And not to forget the most important element, shiny baubles standing in for characters: Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari settles creakily back in the sangeet-sagaai-shaadi template awash with star-crossed lovers and their parivarik conflicts. In short, everything we’ve seen before, in multiple iterations, over the years, because that’s literally all mainstream Bollywood rom coms seem capable of these days. Even the usage of the word ‘situationship’ feels familiar, even when it is mouthed by Ananya (Sanya Malhotra) to describe the thing between her and Sunny (Varun Dhawan): why should only boys have all the fun? She was his, and now she’s not, and he needs to deal with it, even as a BFF Bantu (Abhinav Sharma) shoulder comes in handy. Of course, there’s a bestie; how else will heroes be propped up?

The film opens with two young men, Chandan and Shoaib, making their way into the centre of a heaving crowd, creating space for themselves. The location is a train station, from where they hope to be borne away, yearning for the ‘ijjat’, and ‘paisa’ which will allow them the dignity they have clearly been deprived of all their lives.

The Ba***ds of Bollywood — the name itself has been causing non-stop buzz because it taps into current public perception of how the Hindi film industry is full of baxxds — is a mixed bag. The problem, in fact, is in the name itself. When ba***dly behaviour is on full display, we feel that promises have been kept, and that it is not just calling its detractors out by putting itself out there, but having some fun at our expense while it’s at it; it’s when the seven-part series segues into the showing us ‘the other side’, that it deflates into seen-before ordinariness. Watching glittering stars sending themselves up is always going to be a send. It never gets old, and we’re so here for it. Aamir, Shah Rukh (a no-brainer, given he is the debutant director Aryan Khan’s proud daddy-o), for pan-Indian appeal, SS Rajamouli, Ranbir Kapoor, Ranvir Singh, Rajummar Rao, Arjun Kapoor, and of course, Karan Johar, who is not just a cameo like the others but a full-fledged presence: who better than Johar to personify the much-reviled movie mafia which ‘buys paps’ and warns people not to ‘cross them’. Salman is a blink-and-miss even as cameos go, and him muttering about not wanting to a be a dad is sort of hilarious, in this whole parade of daddies. It’s all nudge-and-wink, and smile-worthy.

Kajol and co are back in Season 2 of ‘The Trial’ as legal eagles working their way through and around the system geared towards saving the powerful and damning the weak. The previous season began with Noyonika Sengupta (Kajol), reeling by the betrayal of a cheating spouse Rajiv (Jisshu Sengupta), having to find her way back into a profession which she thought she had left behind. The cases, handed out by senior advocates Malini Khanna (Sheeba Chaddha) and Vishal Chaubey (Alyy Khan) plunges her into a discovery of the self — away from the roles of wife and mom to two young daughters — even as she learns to navigate office politics, learning the difference between who is a plunger of the knife (Gaurav Pandey), and who has her back.

Anurag Kashyap is back in the zone. The one which belongs to the nexus between small-town hoods, local netas-and-pehelwans, crooked cops, with men taking aim and putting one, not just right between the eye, but betwixt certain nether regions which have colourful descriptions in Purabiya.

Jolly LLB 3 has two Jollys, Jagdishwar Mishra (Akshay Kumar) and Jagdish Tyagi (Arshad Warsi), for the price of one, facing off in and out of a Delhi court. Their initial rivalry, spread over the first half, predictably rolls over into the two joining hands against the victims of a huge land fraud perpetrated by greedy land-grabbers, and their partners.

Two old friends get together to create a new brand. Of craft beer. In Gurgaon. Troubles pile up. The going doesn’t look as if it will be easy. Stop press. Gotta spill it right here, that the going is so hard that by the end of the first episode (there are eight in all), all I wanted to do was flee. It would have been one thing if this show, the latest offering from Dharmatic, was simply daft. Daftness, well done, can be a lot of fun. But ‘Do You Wanna Partner’ is plain terrible: there’s not one idea or performance that it can grab on to to save itself from going under, and staying there.