‘Call Me Bae’ series review: Ananya Panday carries a no-carbs comedy

A nonetheless from ‘Name Me Bae’ 
| Photograph Credit score: Particular Association

What hustle? What Mumbai? Probably the most complicated issues in Name Me Bae — a brand new comedy collection starring Ananya Panday and streaming on Prime Video — is a generic rap quantity that performs within the preliminary episodes, reminding you ways, when you’re there, town of desires will grind you down. This can be a riches-to-rags comedy that hopes to amuse by airdropping its impossibly ditzy protagonist into the reduce and thrust of odd Mumbai. Besides, it wouldn’t know odd Mumbai if it sat subsequent to it on the Virar native, sweating profusely or watching Taarak Mehta episodes.

The protagonist is Bella Chowdhury (Panday), or simply Bae. A wealthy South Delhi socialite, she’s evicted by her husband, enterprise tycoon Agastya (Vihaan Samat), after he catches her dallying with the coach. A collection of vaguely outlined circumstances parks Bae, together with her menagerie of high-priced purses, in Mumbai. Shunned by household and pals, Bae resolves to reclaim her sense of self-worth. This proves considerably difficult— since Bae’s {qualifications} embrace, amongst different issues, ‘psychic vegan cheese and wine pairing’ and ‘David Beckham research’. She additionally calls an autorickshaw ‘tuktuk’ (Kim Kardashian, jetting in for the Ambani marriage ceremony two months in the past, did a complete lot higher).

Fortunately, Bae has one saving grace. She as soon as did a course in Social Media Journalism, or, as she herself places it, ‘methods to do in-depth tales in lower than 140 characters’. This wins her an internship at a number one information channel the place the workers roam round in leopard and spaceman costumes. However, Bae begins to earn, underneath her personal steam, and has quickly constructed herself a small posse of supporters.

The collection, created by Ishita Moitra and directed by Collin D’Cunha, has a disarmingly literal sense of humour. Bae is born with a literal golden spoon. She is scrupulously skilled by her status-obsessed, fascinator-sporting mom (Mini Mathur) to change into a trophy spouse; an precise trophy flashes in the course of the stated disclosure. Some traces catch you abruptly (“Dinesh… let’s go to area”; “Hello Faye! I’m Bae”). But the wordplay isn’t matched by revolutionary dramatic conditions. There are excruciating flashbacks to Bae’s less-than-perfect previous—to her struggles with alcoholism and shoplifting, to fragments of her fraying marriage, to the time she volunteered at an animal shelter in New York.

Name Me Bae has too many Western sitcoms on its thoughts to totally change into its personal present. Whereas Bae name-checks The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, there are shades of Schitt’s Creek, Two Broke Ladies and Emily in Paris. Bae’s globe-trotting anecdotes aren’t practically as fascinating as these of Alexis Rose in Schitt’s Creek. Mumbai, in the meantime, hardly registers as a backdrop. The ‘Losttel’ Bae checks into early on is a hippie-chic commune that may exist wherever; her subsequent home, shared with a colleague, is as spacious and moodily lit as you’ll anticipate from a Dharmatic manufacturing.

Greater than the #MeToo monitor that springs up halfway by means of, with Bae and her gang chasing up an nameless tip, the collection is extra partaking in its quieter, throwaway moments. No less than one relationship, on the sidelines, blooms unexpectedly. The collection can also have one thing attention-grabbing to say about moms and kids—and filial relationships typically. When a personality complains that, being the kid of a single mother, she was by no means ‘pampered’, one other responds by saying that he was all the time pampered, although his mother, too, was single. “She would make me tea with lemon, ginger, cinnamon,” he remembers with love. There are totally different shades of parenting, and totally different shades of progress.

Ananya Panday as Bella ‘Bae’ Chowdhury in ‘Name Me Bae’

After Gehraiyaan (2022) and Kho Gaye Hum Kahan(2023), Panday as soon as once more performs a personality who’s, to place it politely, in her proximate wheelhouse. Her daffy, upbeat exuberance carries massive swathes of useless narrative. But, it isn’t essentially the most tough position—past the truth that Bae is of course good, and enjoys getting plastered in moments of emotional stress, there isn’t a lot meat on her gluten-free plate. Vir Das, an instinctive and celebrated comedian, wings it within the a part of a muckraking anchor. Funniest of all is his managing editor. “We don’t wish to be a information channel that’s on the incorrect aspect of historical past,” he warns solemnly. Good for you, sir.