Crazy Rich Indians:
The household help of the residents of Gurugram’s La Opulenza live in neat, air-conditioned homes. There are golf courses, jogging tracks and parks named after gemstones, a huge clubhouse and a pond deep enough to dump corpses that never surface. The Amazon Prime series, Hush Hush is enamoured of the upper class milieu it brings to the screen—posh gated communities so large that people take golf carts to visit their friends in the next tower. The ladies who meet in swanky restaurants for Japanese meals, wear designer outfits and heirloom jewellery, live in lavish homes and get hydration alerts on their phones. So while they are zapping the viewer with this world of wealth and privilege – not an ugly Dilli jhuggi in sight—they forget the Big Little Lies-style plot needs to be as interesting as the look. To be fair, Hush Hush, directed by Tanuja Chandra (who helms four of the seven episodes, with Kopal Naithani Ashish Pandey handling the rest), starts off well, with a murder and a mysterious locked-room death, and then scatters all over the lush lawns.
The gang of four ladies-who-lunch comprise a designer of eye-wateringly expensive lehengas , Zaira (Shahana Goswami), former journalist, Saiba (Soha Ali Khan), disgruntled wife Dolly (Kritika Kamra), and fascinatingly enough, Juhi Chawla as Ishi Sanghamitra, a Niira Radia-inspired PR professional and fixer, who everybody loves to hate. It is not quite clear how the four, who have nothing in common become such devoted friends, but when they get into trouble—of their own making—all their style and wealth does not lend them any common sense.
It is only on screen that people live such insular lives, that that have never even seen a police procedural film or serial, they merrily leave clues and DNA on a crime scene, but even the earnest cop Geeta Tehlan (Karishma Tanna) does not think to send a team to pick up forensic evidence at spot where a possible murder victim was last seen arguing with a notorious crook. But then, as her cynical boss (Vibha Chibber) sneers, “This is not New York, this is Haryana. You need a warrant here?”
When the viewer is curious to know about the murders and the aftemath, they are given the women’s mundane problems. Dolly’s dragon of a mother-in-law wants a grandkid, Zaira, who is supposedly at the cusp of a career high, gets sidelined, first into a blackmail threat and then into a throwaway romance; Saiba’s husband and kids get dragged into a mess, and she sighs, “There should be manual for something like this.” The strangest is Ishi, who has the movers and shakers of the capital wrapped around her finger, but is unbelievably shocked when she learns of the perversions of powerful men.
All manner of strange hoodlums prowl around aimlessly, one of them does yoga in the middle of deserted road! The episodes lurch from the past to the present; all this leads to a shelter run by Ishi’s childhood friend Meera (Ayesh Jhulka) and a totally different crime ring.
It is as if the series (written by Shikhaa Sharma and Asish Mehta, with dialogue by Juhi Chaturvedi) checked an inclusivity list for supporting characters—mentally ill, differently-abled, lesbian, Muslim. Many of these add nothing to the plot and are there just because it is trendy to have a gay kiss and throw terms like bipolar.
It is very unfair to Juhi Chawla, that she gets so little to do, and is not even given a costume change. Still, when she gets an emotional confrontation scene, she nails it. Season One works in fits and starts, because the actresses look good and act reasonably well; when they are together, there is a sort of sisterly chemistry. The door is left open for a Season Two, which, going by the way this one ends, would be way more intriguing, provided the focus is on nabbing the evildoers, not so much on costumes, interiors and domestic dramas.
(A slightly modified version of this piece appeared in scroll.in)
