A Touch Frivolous But Certainly Isn’t Irredeemably Vapid

Crafted largely with broad strokes, Call Me Bae, created by Ishita Moitra, co-written by her with Samina Motlekar and Rohit Nair and directed by Collin D’Cunha, is not without its share of fun and flashes of insight.

It is another matter that the terrain that Call me Bae traverses is not instantly and naturally conducive to anything more than the delivery of shallow truths about life and manners, and about riches and reality checks. The show does that much, a perhaps a bit more, with passable flair.

Ananya Panday toplines the eight-episode Dharmatic Entertainment-produced Prime Video India show, a social comedy centred on the trials and tribulations of a filthy rich South Delhi girl thrown out into the cold and forced to fend for herself in Mumbai.

The character only sporadically pushes Panday out of her comfort zone. But to her credit, she grabs the ample opportunity for evolution that the long-form story and the sure-handed writing offer her. She etches out a relatable figure who is worth rooting for even though the show does not offer much by way of illuminating epiphanies.

For Bella Chowdhary aka Bae, born into wealth and married into even more wealth, there is no such thing as “too much bling”. Early on in the series, her family is on the verge of bankruptcy. Her marital liaison with the scion of a thriving business empire saves her parents from turning middle class.

But when everything seems to be sorted, life takes an unexpected and unhappy turn. Bae finds herself out of favour with her Richie Rich husband. Her access to all the money that was hers for the asking is cut off and she is compelled to leave Delhi and set herself up in Mumbai.

Do old habits die easy? Not for Bae. She does not rid herself of her obsession with designer clothes and accoutrements. Not that Call Me Bae puts the charmed heroine through the kind of grind that lesser mortals have to countenance day in and day out in order to simply make ends meet.

Bae does not exactly slum it out. The worst that happens to her is that she has to look for a job, share a flat with a colleague, commute in an autorickshaw and deign to eat vada-pav on the beach (but not before sanitising the bench on which she sits).

The casting is salutary. Ananya Panday feeds off Bae and vice-versa. The protagonist, like a real-life star kid, is so accustomed to her uber-luxe cocoon that when she steps out of the protective bubble created by her doting and calculative mother (Mini Mathur) and a husband (Vihaan Samat) who denies her nothing except his attention, and encounters the real world, she is still infinitely better off materially than most of us ever will be at the best of times.

In a meta dig at an Ananya Panday utterance that became a meme and went viral, a residential complex security guard quips that he would be happy to reach where Bae’s majboori begins. The lady’s response to that observation – where have I heard that one before? – not only collapses, for a fleeting moment, the wall between the fictional and the actual, but is also an example of the self-deprecating humour that is strewn across Call Me Bae.

The writing is generally bright and the story gallops at a fair clip. A panoply of people surrounds Bae as she makes her way through the rough and tumble of a city not her own. The show follows her transformation into a woman who learns to surmount reverses and hurdles and find friends, purpose and gumption.

Call Me Bae alternates between the agreeably breezy and the gratuitously flippant in its search for a narrative median that can hold the show together. The flow may not be consistent but the blend of drollery and solemnity works for the most part.

Call Me Bae turns deadly serious in its final quarter when the heroine takes it upon herself to expose an unholy nexus between the mainstream media and a corporate entity whose head honcho isn’t what he claims to be.

When Bae’s picture-perfect life is marred by an act of indiscretion and the kneejerk reaction to it by her husband and she is forced to branch out on her own, the first few episodes keep the audience invested in her plight. Just a hint of monotony creeps in thereafter but it does not permanent or major damage.

As is customary in tales of this nature, Bae takes next to no time to discover soulmates who stand by her through thick and thin. Five-star hotel employee Saira Ali (Muskkan Jaferi) is the first. Bae gifts her an LV Sarah wallet, an act that turns out to be a blessing in disguise in the long run.

Bae lands a job without too much of a struggle at a news channel, where she quickly befriends a junior reporter (Niharika Lyra Dutt) who knows her mind. A few episodes in, she also makes common cause with an actress (Sayani Gupta, in an extended cameo that makes a mark) who has a story to share with the world.

The girls form a coven that gives them the strength to navigate their own flaws – both Bae and Saira have serious ones – and ward off the arrogant ways of Satyajit Sen aka SS (Vir Das), who hosts the channel’s principal primetime show. He is a douchebag who hides the stink he exudes behind a veneer of corrosive cockiness. Das’s performance is one of the highlights of the show.

Not all the men around Bae are despicable louts. One of them, Neel N. (Gurfateh Pirzada), swears by the virtues of serious journalism and stands up against the sensationalism that SS peddles. He instils in Bae the belief that “the story is always bigger than the journalist”.

The man who sweeps Bae off her feet and sparks trouble in her paradise – celebrity gym trainer Prince (Varun Sood) – doubles up as a tech whiz and ethical hacker when push comes to shove. He turns out to be her greatest ally when troubles begin to pile up.

Somebody advises Bae to switch off her TV set if “you are looking for real journalism… it’s not on TV anymore”. It is not known whether Bae pays heed to that suggestion, but if you are looking for anything other than a few hours of frothy entertainment, Call Me Bae may not be for you. A touch frivolous it may be, but the series certainly isn’t irredeemably vapid or vacuous.