One of the few snags of making a show as perceptive and sophisticated as Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar’s Made in Heaven is that tiny inauthenticities register for much longer, something that one might easily be overlooked in lesser shows.

In Season 2 of the show, where Alankrita Shrivastava joins creators Kagti and Akhtar as a writer (Shrivastava also directed two episodes), we see multiple scenes of Karan (Arjun Mathur) shooting lines of cocaine, and the camera cutting to a top-shot of his dazed and goofy smile with a psychedelic song playing in the background. It’s such a dated depiction of drug use that I’d like to call it the ‘Mohra aesthetic’ (based on Rajiv Rai’s classic 1994 potboiler).

A one-off shot to establish a character falling off the wagon is not a bad idea, but when showrunners repeatedly show a character doing drugs and behaving erratically over three consecutive episodes, it points towards simplistic cause-and-effect filmmaking that negates Akhtar, Kagti and Shrivastava’s usual measured style.

The economy finally arrives in episode four, co-directed by Akhtar and Kagti, where we see Karan barge into a room with a sense of heightened commotion. It takes a few moments for the viewer to realise his actions here are the aftermath of something that happened minutes ago in another room.

Despite the glamour of Delhi weddings, Made in Heaven 2 gets weighed down with stereotypes and social justice lessons. Thank heavens, then, for Sobhita Dhulipala’s Tara

But before that happens, in earlier episodes, one almost wishes that directors Shrivastava and Neeraj Ghaywan (who directed episodes two and three respectively) would have exercised similar prudence to depict drug use, without making it seem like we’re stuck in the 90s.

The second season begins six months after the events of the first season — where the wedding planners’ office was vandalised, and Tara (Sobhita Dhulipala) walked out of her marriage with all of her wedding jewellery.

While seeking a divorce from Adil Khanna (Jim Sarbh), Tara is still coming to terms with being excluded from the circles of Delhi’s ultra-rich — which she once had access to as the daughter-in-law of the Khanna household.

Dhulipala is excellent at expressing Tara’s struggle around wanting to stand up for her values, but also looking on with naked aspiration at a handbag. There’s a terrific scene in the first episode outside a Sabyasachi store, where Tara greets a “friend” from her past life, who gets down from a swanky Mercedes.

Moments later, Tara proceeds to get into a shabby-looking Uber from the same spot. It’s the kind of precise observation about Tara’s changed circumstances that bears the mark of the Kagti-Akhtar stable.

Meanwhile, Karan is grappling with the disapproval of his sexuality from his cancer-afflicted mother. When Karan tries to convince her to start chemotherapy, she shoots back, “It’s not the cancer that is killing me.” Can anyone be as nasty as an Indian mother who has truly stopped caring?

To their credit, Akhtar and Kagti’s social-issue-of-the-week model of storytelling still makes for addictive viewing. Among the issues are a bride obsessing about her complexion; a bride dealing with physical abuse; an inter-caste marriage; and a same-sex couple exchanging vows.

Even though most of these issues keep coming up at weddings like clockwork, no one at the Made in Heaven offices seems to be batting an eyelid. No one’s complaining though, given how watchable (and bingeable) Made in Heaven is.

The show brings two new characters on board with its recurring ensemble of actors like Jim Sarbh, Kalki Koechlin, Shashank Arora and Shivani Raghuvanshi. TV star Mona Singh plays Bulbul Jauhari, the wife of Mr Jauhari (the always-excellent Vijay Raaz), who joins the office as an ‘auditor’ to oversee expenses, so as to turn Made in Heaven into a profit-making organisation.

Singh’s career trajectory has been interesting since she moved away from TV, doing bit roles in mainstream films such as 3 Idiots (2008) and Laal Singh Chaddha, in which she was the best thing. She’s also excellent in the new season.

Raising a teenage boy who is accused of molesting a fellow classmate, Singh’s face conveys what millions of words couldn’t. The fear that her son is carrying his biological father’s DNA, the disgust when she knows he’s lying through his teeth, the perplexed look when the other parents casually slut-shame the girl — Singh’s eyes are a horror film here.

Trinetra Haldar, a trans actor, plays Meher Chaudhary — the new head of production at the wedding-planning company. Even though we should laud the intent of showrunners, the character isn’t as incidental as they’d like it to be. Over the course of the show, Meher becomes a vessel for trans sensitisation, a noble thought, but without ever becoming a fully fleshed-out, flawed person of her own.

Those who have seen Saim Sadiq’s Joyland (2022), which employs a trans character in a subversive manner, might be able to see how Haldar’s character never reaches beyond its place-holder status. It wouldn’t be unfair to expect a bit more nuance from directors as socially cognisant as Akhtar, Kagti, Ghaywan and Shrivastava, would it?

Made in Heaven 2 has some clever special appearances, such as Sanjay Kapoor playing a jovial, greedy, bred-in-Delhi boomer, who cracks silly jokes like ‘Baraatiyon ka swaagat single malt se kiya jaaye’ and then leans in to hi-five everyone in his vicinity.

Unfortunately, it barely registers in one of the weakest episodes of the show, despite a crackling premise. Anurag Kashyap’s wink-at-the-audience performances are slowly becoming too boring and one-note.

Radhika Apte is a pleasure to watch as an Ivy League scholar who, despite having the world at her feet, is reduced to her Dalit surname in her own wedding. In a show where each episode feels like a refresher course in a new social justice issue, Apte brings a real vulnerability to her character.

Playing a scholar from a Dalit community, she grapples with her politics and being affable with her future in-laws, between flashes of self-importance and carrying around the weight of her ideology. Without Apte’s deeply-moving performance, the episode could have easily become a Doordarshan PSA.

The second season carries forward some ghosts from the first — such as Kabir Basrai’s (Shashank Arora) insufferable, condescending voiceover. Frankly, it’s shocking that Kagti and Akhtar have persisted with his platitudes ‘explaining’ what just happened in the episode, seemingly written by a slam-poet from GK-II.

Arora is excellent when he’s just being his loose self on screen, especially around Raghuvanshi — arguably the most spontaneous actor in this solid ensemble. Jim Sarbh is pitch-perfect in a scene at the divorce court, where he snootily compares coffee to dishwater. There’s just the right amount of privilege, entitlement and civility to make Adil seem like a fully-rounded character — instead of an easy-to-dislike rich brat.

In the end, however, Made in Heaven 2 belongs to one character only — Sobhita Dhulipala’s Tara. It’s possibly the most compelling lead character written in India’s OTT era (spanning almost six years now).

The show fully embraces Tara’s twisted, selfish ways — painting her as a loyal friend, a dutiful daughter and daughter-in-law; an outsider desperately trying to find her way in, disillusioned by how rigged the system is against someone like her, something that probably convinces her that anything is fair game for her to get ahead in life.

Kagti and Akhtar show a great degree of empathy and curiosity towards why she acts in certain ways and never judge her for it. Tara is a stellar concoction of an underdog, someone we know is capable of ‘anything’, and yet we also understand her desperation and loneliness. As her character’s name suggests, Dhulipala is a star — cementing her position as one of the finest discoveries in recent times.

Made in Heaven often seems too stacked with conversations around social justice, but if moral science lessons are packaged into glamorous-looking Delhi weddings — who is ever going to complain? Yet, if I ever bumped into the showrunners at any point, I’d just tell them to take it easy.

By arrangement with The Wire

Published in Dawn, ICON, September 2rd, 2023