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

What hustle? What Mumbai? One of the vital 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 the way, when you’re there, town of desires will grind you down. It is a riches-to-rags comedy that hopes to amuse by airdropping its impossibly ditzy protagonist into the lower and thrust of unusual Mumbai. Besides, it wouldn’t know unusual 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, along with her menagerie of pricy purses, in Mumbai. Shunned by household and mates, 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 wedding 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, ‘how you can 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. Nonetheless, Bae begins to earn, beneath 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 educated by her status-obsessed, fascinator-sporting mom (Mini Mathur) to turn out to be a trophy spouse; an precise trophy flashes through the stated disclosure. Some traces catch you unexpectedly (“Dinesh… let’s go to house”; “Hello Faye! I’m Bae”). But the wordplay isn’t matched by progressive 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 turn out to be its personal present. Whereas Bae name-checks The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, there are shades of Schitt’s Creek, Two Broke Women 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 count on 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 participating in its quieter, throwaway moments. At the very least one relationship, on the sidelines, blooms unexpectedly. The collection can also have one thing attention-grabbing to say about moms and youngsters—and filial relationships basically. 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 at all times pampered, although his mother, too, was single. “She would make me tea with lemon, ginger, cinnamon,” he remembers with love. There are completely different shades of parenting, and completely different shades of development.

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 giant swathes of lifeless narrative. But, it isn’t essentially the most troublesome 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 improper aspect of historical past,” he warns solemnly. Good for you, sir.