Bella In Versova:
If Emily can go to Paris and do little more than pose in gorgeous outfits, surely Bella “Call Me Bae” can come to Mumbai and wear lovely designer costumes, even if they are wholly inappropriate for the weather, and auto-rickshaw rides.
Directed by Collin D’Cunha, written by Ishita Moitra, Samina Motlekar, and Rohit Nair, and produced by Karan Johar’s Dharmatic, Call Me Bae, is a breezy series about Bella ‘Bae’ Chaudhary discovering herself is a hoot through most part. Bae is a rich Delhi girl, married to a richer Delhi dude, Agastya (Vihaan Samat), who has no time for her. Bae always wanted to make something of her life, but her privilege came in the way. A woman who has wall to wall designer stuff, commutes by helicopter and has a no-limit platinum card is lonely. So, when she gets attention and romantic heat off her fitness trainer Prince (Varun Sood), she slips, is caught, disgraced in the media and banished from Delhi. Not even her mother (Mini Mathur) is allowed to be in touch with her, and her usually dependable brother Samar (Shiv Masand) is more interested in his business with Agastya, than his sister’s marital crisis.
The show (on Amazon Prime Video) does not portray Bae as a rich bitch—she is kind, knows the names of the staff in the Mumbai hotel where the family has a suite, which is why, when she is in dire straits, they come to her help. She refuses a handout by her husband, and a flat offered by her brother, deciding to deal with life on her own. A hotel staffer Saira (Muskkaan Jaferi), gives her shelter in a hostel and helps her raise money by selling her designer bags. Bae ought to have been horribly discomfited with these much reduced circumstances, but she adjusts remarkably quickly—as comfortable in an auto, as she is abandoning her curated keto meals and eating vada pav on the beach. Her only quirk is sanitizing every surface before sitting on it. She feels no shame in posting pictures of her new “middle class” life on Insta.
When she makes fun of nasty, celebrity TV anchor Satyajit Sen (Vir Das), and the video goes viral, she is offered a job as an intern (doing what?) by Sen’s rival, the more sedate Neel (Gurfateh Pirzada), whose show has lower ratings as opposed to Sen’s dig-up-the-dirt programme. A fellow worker in the channel, Tamarrah (Niharika Lyra Dutt), offers to share her dingy flat and the rent with Bae, and soon enough Saira squeezes into the space too, and the ever loyal Prince arrives to help her cope. Again Bae cheerfully adjusts to sleeping on a couch and helping with household chores, which she had never done before in her life, what with the army of domestic staff at her beck and call.
She gets a professional challenge when a mysterious Anamika sends her a video accusing a top industrialist and potential politician Mukul Sawla (Sahil Shroff) of sexual harassment. Her girl gang or “behen-code” comes together, first to find Anamika and then to expose Sawla, who has the power to shut them all down.
Borrow from shows like Two Broke Girls, Schitt’s Creek and Emily in Paris, this OTT launch for Ananya Panday works as long as it is sharp and funny. When it goes into serious #MeToo mode, with the three women and Prince going undercover (a journalist can hardly get her friends to work on a story) to get the inside dope on Sawla and Sen, Call Me Bae, goes off the rails, and into the territory of the ludicrous. In spite of the often screechy and invasive tone of TV journalists, the media does not function the way it is portrayed in the show.
However, Bae is sweet and likeable, even when she is insufferably dumb, and Panday plays her with a pleasant insouciance that could perhaps carry her over to a second season, which is hinted at in the end. Maybe she will learn what real journalism is all about… and perhaps try getting into a local train at peak hours!
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
