Youthful Capers:
The new TVF web series, College Romance Season 3 (on SonyLiv), is aimed at teens, but maybe parents should watch to see what their college-going kids are up to, because it is definitely not studying. Parents or any adults are conspicuous by their absence, but they evidently meet their kids’ financial demands.
The five-part series, directed by Parijat Joshi (written by Ashutosh Chaturvedi and Pankaj Mavchi), follows the amorous adventures of a group of Delhi friends, who hang out, party and down copious amounts of booze. But there is a degree of innocence too—no drugs; pairing up, but not much sex. And lots of colourful profanity.
Bagga (Gagan Arora) and Karan (Keshav Sadhna) get a new flatmate, Harry (Eklavey Kashyap). Bagga (who is called Bugs and Bagge, but no first name?) is trying out a long distance relationship with Naira (Apoorva Arora) with little success. Karan’s ex, Deepika (Shreya Mehta), who is tall and, for some reason, English-speaking–hence, sexually active seems to follow. She hooks up with Harry, while Karan reels in Dhatrpriya or DP (Nupur Nagpal), who is bespectacled, hence nerdy and naïve (her coping strategy is bingeing on golgappas). The curly-haired Raavie (Jahnvi Rawat) is the one who inadvertently causes trouble in the tightly-knit group. Talk of stereotypes!
They drive fancy wheels, wear trendy clothes and party seemingly round the clock. They speak Punjabi accented Hindi though, with slang like chill maar, woh cheat maar raha tha, and compro ho gaya. Some phrases seem to be timeless, though this does not sound like current teen slang, which is influenced by social media these days.
Unlike the swotters in other web shows like Kota Factory and Crash Course, these youngsters have no exam fears or career tensions. Their crises, for most part, are insignificant in the larger scene of things. Like Karan getting all riled up when he thinks Bagga is cheating on Naira; or when the juniors stand up to seniors who won’t let them join a party. Or when a hooligan type spikes a girl’s drink.
The paired up teens are strangely old-fashioned, behaving as if college romance are for life and lead to marriage and kids! When Naira goes abroad to study, she cannot bear to be away from her friends, while almost every youngster today wants to settle in the US, and are actively encouraged by their parents to do so.
The show is light, fluffy, no real problems, teen angst or tragedy, till much later when a leaked video causes some grief, tests the group’s progressive thinking or lack thereof, and makes way for a Season 4. The show is popular enough to continue, but may be it needs to get out of its disinfected bubble and face the real world.
Undoubtedly the best thing about College Romance is the cast– the actors are tremendously talented and deserve to be cast in more challenging roles.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
