Bicker Central:
There are the overdone kitchen sink dramas that are still popular on television, and then the small family comedies, of which a large chunk of the has been captured by TVF’s shows like Gullak, Tripling and Yeh Meri Family. The new Z5 show, Bakaiti, aims at the modest middle class family space, but cuts too close to the bone, which makes the humour more discomfiting than funny.
The Kataria family lives in a Ghaziabad bungalow that would be the envy of a Mumbai resident, but over there, multiple rooms plus a terrace seem to be inadequate! Sanjay Kataria (Rajesh Tailang) is a lawyer, whose practice is confined to small affidavit-like jobs, his wife Sushma (Sheeba Chaddha) is a homemaker, looking after two endlessly bickering teenagers Naina (Tanya Sharma) and Bharat (Aditya Shukla) and her idle, reels-addicted father (Ramesh Rai). Facing a financial crunch, Sanjay decides to take on a paying guest in one of the rooms, which would mean the siblings having to share. The excessive fuss that they make, it’s like they were being sent to a war zone. If the high-pitched screeching of the two, added to the mechanical drone of a water pump overflow warning, were not enough, the snooty put downs of Sanjay’s better-off brother Ajay (Parvinder Jit Singh) and his wife Alka (Poonam Jangra) strew the six-part show with noise and misery.
The episodes are short, and the problems faced by the family relatable, and, for that reason, also a bit dry. The brothers fighting at their recently deceased father’s terahvi (thirteenth day ritual) over property, and who did more is the kind of bitter family squabble that is only too familiar.
The Kataria kids come across as spoiled and clueless, though they are old enough to understand the financial strain their father is going through. They try to earn money to stave off the tenant—not so much as to share the burden– but realise that they are not up to it; Naina’s crush on the handsome tenant (Keshav Sadhna) and heartbreak at his brush off has a kind of sweet innocence.
Unlike the TVF shows that manage to mine humour and a nostalgia for family bonds that are seen to be fraying in real life, the ordinariness of Bakaiti, directed by Ameet Guptha, written by Gunjan Saxena, Neha Pawar, Sheetal Kapoor, becomes its stumbling block. Money worries, or a parent not being able to fulfill a child’s wish are serious matters, and with no easy solutions at hand, there are little tragedies that weigh on the characters and by association the show.
Sheeba Chaddha and Rajesh Tailang are able to bring emotional strength to the characters—nothing is beyond their formidable talent and they hold the show together with the warmth and understated empathy they bring to that overstuffed Ghaziabad home, where even the water pump has a temper. The show ends with a “phir milenge” and hopefully more entertaining episodes.
(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)
