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86 | Sight&Sound | April 2020Best laid plans: Made in Heaven explores issues of class and sexuality in modern-day IndiaMADE IN HEAVEN
Reviewed by Naman Ramachandran
A brightly lit Indian wedding is what most
international audiences would expect from a
Bollywood production, and that is exactly how
Amazon Prime Video’s Made in Heaven opens.
But while there is a Bollywood sheen to the
proceedings throughout, series creators Zoya
Akhtar (Gully Boy, 2019), Reema Kagti (Gold,
2019) and co-writer Alankrita Shrivastava
(Dolly Kitty and Those Twinkling Stars, 2019)
delve below the surface gloss to examine the
deep fissures in contemporary Indian society.
The series is named after a New Delhi-based
wedding planning agency, Made in Heaven,
run by Karan Mehra (Arjun Mathur) and Tara
Khanna (Sobhita Dhulipala). Unlike the super-
rich clients whose progeny’s weddings they
plan, Karan and Tara are middle-class. Karan’s
character is a rarity in screen portrayals in
India in that he is openly, defiantly gay, and
the series does not shy away from depictions
of gay sex. While homosexuality is no longer
illegal in India, it is still not widely accepted in
what remains a deeply conservative society.
Tara has clawed her way into the ranks of
the elite by marrying into the Khanna family.
Her husband, the industrialist Adil (Jim
Sarbh), is having an affair with his old friend
Faiza Naqvi (Kalki Koechlin), who is from
the same socioeconomic background as him.
India has always been riven by caste and class
differences and the entertainment industry
has long been mining this for drama. Series
co-creator Akhtar’s last film Gully Boy, set in
the slums of Mumbai, poignantly explored
the same terrain. Made in Heaven too, brutally
exposes this aspect of everyday life in the
country, showing the way, for example, that
an intern at the agency, Jaspreet Kaur (Shivani
Raghuvanshi), is constantly reminded that she
is from one of the less salubrious parts of Delhi.
Made in Heaven also tackles subjects such
as superstition, impotency and marriages
of convenience. If all this makes the series
sound ponderous, it is not. Dividing directorial
duties episodically, Akhtar, Nitya Mehra
(Baar Baar Dekho), Shrivastava and Prashant
Nair (Umrika), display a lightness of touch
that keeps the series the right side of mass
entertainment, sugar-coating the pill as it
were. A second season is in the works.
The Indian streaming market is booming,
with more than 30 active platforms. The
sector will be worth £1.3 billion by 2023,
according to a 2019 PriceWaterhouseCoopers
industry report, with thousands of hours of
original content already commissioned.Disney’s Hotstar is the undisputed market
leader, with more than 300 million monthly
active users. Its original offerings include local
versions of Criminal Justice and The Office. Sister
channel Disney+ is due to launch at the end of
March. Netflix, meanwhile, has made a splash
with Sacred Games, a loose adaptation of Vikram
Chandra’s bestselling Mumbai underworld
novel, and Delhi Crime, a harrowing account
of the investigation following a notorious
gang rape in Delhi in 2012. Successes for
Amazon include the spy thriller The Family
Man, the World War II drama The Forgotten
Army and the crime thriller Mirzapur. AppleTV+ and Mubi are also present in India but
haven’t yet announced any original content.
It is local streamers, however, such as
ALTBalaji and Zee5, that drive the real
volume, although they don’t have the deep
pockets of their international rivals. Rather
than target the urban demographic, they’re
looking to second- and third-tier Indian cities.
ALTBalaji is commissioning bold, sexually
frank shows. Gandi Baat, available on both
ALTBalaji and Zee5, began in 2018, and tells
erotically charged stories set in rural and small-
town India. It is now in its fourth season.
While television continues to be the focus for
family viewing, streaming content is increasingly
a solo activity, with the majority of people
watching on their phones. With some of the
cheapest data rates in the world, and the number
of smartphone users projected to rise to 442
million by 2022, it’s no wonder that the streamers
are scrambling to create Indian content.A series about a pair of New
Delhi-based wedding planners
is proving a good match in the
booming Indian streaming marketWhile it has a Bollywood
sheen, ‘Made in Heaven’ delves
beneath the surface to examine
deep fissures in Indian society
MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE
Streaming
Enlightened
The ‘Laura Dern-aissance’ arguably began back
with this HBO series, which ran for two seasons
between 2011-13 and then largely disappeared
from view, despite being a clear forerunner
of such later women-centred dramas as Big
Little Lies (itself, of course, a key factor in the
revival of Dern’s fortunes). Created by Dern
with writer-director Mike White, who wrote all
episodes and also co-stars, it earned Dern a
Golden Globe, but never found the audience
it so deserved. Dern plays Amy Jellicoe, a
woman with a gift for irritating everyone shewould like to befriend. When we meet her
she is living at home with her mum (Dern’s
real-life mother, Diane Ladd) in a Californian
suburb, having sabotaged her career at a big
company and gone to rehab in Hawaii. She
returns to work, now demoted – but begins
to question the company’s ethos, and finds a
purpose in activism. With episodes directed
by Todd Haynes, Jonathan Demme and Nicole
Holofcener, it’s a great, acutely insightful tragi-
comedy richly deserving rediscovery, and is
thankfully now available to stream on HBO,
and via platforms such as NowTV.MORE STREAMING RECOMMENDATIONS