What Is the Story About?
Disney Plus Hotstar’s latest Indian original show ‘Saas Bahu Aur Flamingo’ centres on Rani Savitri Devi (Dimple Kapadia), who runs a flourishing drug cartel in the fictional village of Runjh, under the guise of a handicrafts-manufacturing outfit. Her badass daughters-in-law Bijli (Isha Talwar) and Kajal (Angira Dhar), daughter Shanta (Radhika Madan), and adopted son Dhiman (Udit Arora) help her run the 500-crore drug empire, while her clueless sons Kapil (Varun Mitra) and Harish (Ashish Verma) work regular corporate jobs in the USA. Soon, however, Savitri’s sore enemy Monk (Deepak Dobriyal), and wily politician Sahebji (Naseeruddin Shah) gang up against her, while a relentless narcotics officer Prashun Jain (Jimit Trivedi) closes in on her crime empire.
Saas Bahu Aur Flamingo is created and directed by Homi Adjania, and written by Saurav Dey, Nandini Gupta and Aman Mannan.
Performances?
Saas Bahu Aur Flamingo is studded with excellent performances across the board. Dimple Kapadia is charismatic and riveting as the stoic, shrewd Savitri. She effortlessly draws attention, and holds it, in every frame she’s in. The younger actresses Angira Dhar, Radhika Madan and Isha Talwar deliver competent performances, and look good while doing it. Varun Mitra and Ashish Varma are decent in their respective roles. Mahabir Singh Bhullar is powerfully effective as Cheema.
Deepak Dobriyal’s Monk comes across as too artificial and contrived to make any kind of lasting impact. Udit Arora is well cast and eminently watchable. Naseeruddin Shah makes a late entry in the series, but his sharp performance is worth the wait. A word of appreciation for Priyasha Bharadwaj, who plays young Savitri with flawless and convincing perfection.
Analysis
Saas Bahu Aur Flamingo boasts an inventive premise — and an excitingly engaging one. After all, who wouldn’t want to ogle a bunch of alluring, attractive women breaking bad in the back of beyond – in this case, the sandy, mountainous, jagged terrain of Rajasthan. The twists and turns that the story takes are also quite intriguing, including several shocking deaths in the course of the narrative.
However, all that inventiveness is lost amidst the swaddle of a bloated screenplay that brims with unnecessary subplots, ludicrous sequences, and a latter half distinctly inspired by HBO’s epic ‘Succession’. Homi Adajania even duly replicates the all-powerful Logan Roy, the come-of-age Kendall Roy, the prone-to-buffoonery Roman Roy, and the underrated Shiv Roy, in Saas Bahu Aur Flamingo. We won’t say who’s who, for fear of giving away spoilers, but well, the similarity between the characters of the two shows is all too apparent.
The first few episodes of the series move ahead at a fast clip. The blood and gore is fun to watch, but only to an extent. Beyond that, it seems to come off as trying too hard, too wannabe — too ‘Breaking Bad’. A few sequences remind one instantly of the iconic show – Monk’s annihilation of his competition in the lunch scene, for instance.
The creators have resorted to some pretty innovative though graphic ways to incorporate uninhibited violence into the storytelling. The series opens with a chopped off head falling to the ground, sliced grotesquely in half. Tongues are spliced off, men are killed with brutal abandon, forks are stabbed into throats, and what not. Yes, the blood and gore comes fast and furious, and with unapologetic nonchalance. After a while, it starts to get a bit much, and on your nerves.
The succession drama in the latter half of the series is quite irritating. It is randomly thrust into the narrative out of nowhere, dragging down the pace and ingenuity of the storytelling by notches. What’s more, it suddenly makes the females — fiercely badass until then — go all wimpy and spineless on us. All of them – at different times in the latter half – declare that they’re tired of the life of crime, of playing games, of their badass lifestyle. Someone needs to tell them – dude, that’s what the story is all about, right? That’s what we’re here to watch, not your regular saas-bahu drama of wishy-washy daughters-in-law and scheming saasu maas.
That aside, the narrative brims with myriad love angles – same sex, incest, casual sex, unrequited love – you name it, it’s there. But what rankles is that most of it seems rather forced and quite unnecessary. To add to that, none of it evokes any kind of emotion or empathy in the viewer, which makes all of it rather inconsequential in the larger scheme of things.
The best scenes of the series are the ones with Dimple Kapadia in them. The lady oozes charisma and power as Savitri, giving off flawless vibes of a woman not to be messed with. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the worst scenes in the series are the ones that feature Deepak Dobriyal. To put it bluntly, Monk is one of the most insipid, unimpactful villains of recent times. The character might tick all the boxes of what makes a menacing villain – different-coloured eyeballs included. But on the whole, it is an utterly pretentious, overdone and decidedly uninteresting character.
The rest of the characterisations are average, though a few could have been dispensed with totally – Prashun’s irritating wife, for instance. Similarly inconsequential characters and subplots only serve to drag down the plot, making it messy, bloated and boring in parts. Trimming off all the excess fat with a ruthless hand would have made the final product tauter and crisper – something that the series lacks in its current state.
Music and Other Departments?
Sachin – Jigar’s music and background score is fantastic. It lends the required heft and gravitas to the storytelling, and is perfectly suited to the narrative. Linesh Desai’s cinematography gives a coveted edge to the series. The breathtaking visuals, shot leisurely and lovingly by Desai, lend a surreal quality to the setting and the backdrop. A.Sreekar Prasad’s editing is sharp and flawless. Bindiya Chhabria and Arvind Ashok Kumar’s production design is fabulous, and one of the stand-out elements of the series.
Highlights?
Performances
Premise
Excellent casting
Background music
Production design
Cinematography
Drawbacks?
Bloated screenplay
Unnecessary subplots
Inconsequential characters and sequences
Did I Enjoy It?
Yes, but with reservations
Will You Recommend It?
Yes, but again, with reservations
Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo Series Review by Binged Bureau
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