Decoupled on Netflix is not your typical “Indian” show. It tries to follow the American comedy-drama shows template of featuring light-touch humour, with a bit of British style satirical comedy thrown in. I enjoy this mixture, as a result, I liked the show and I will give it a Raw, but it may not appeal to you. Also remember, the characters freely utter a lot of profanity and openly discuss sex, a rarity for Indian living rooms – I didn’t find the occurrences out-of-place in the episodes, and I was able to smile at most of them.

The show is based on a one-line story of a rich couple with a daughter losing the love between them and contemplating divorce. Do they take the plunge or not is the plot? Shows like this depend entirely on the lead pair, Madhavan and Surveen Chawla suit their respective roles of a successful writer and a venture capitalist, very well. The story is written by famous author Manu Joseph, who presents a mirror to the burgeoning upper-middle class of India on their hypocrisy – these people live a life that’s a constant conflict between their Indianness and the western identity they wish to embrace. The show makes sarcasm of the spiritual gurus of India and even the producer of the show, Netflix were not spared.

Celebrated Indian Author Chetan Bhagat makes a few cameo appearances and I enjoyed them. I liked the driver character who was portrayed to be a strong person, but unfortunately in one of the later episodes, he was shown behaving like a fool which was in poor taste.

To the extent, Arya Iyer (the husband character) gets defined and explored, Shruti Sharma (the wife character) was not and that made the story a bit uneven between the couple. The last episode where an escort is hired was stretching things a bit far, also it was easily predictable and hence falls flat on humour as well.

The show had a lot of good things, and if the makers iron out the wrinkles the second season (if there is going to be one) can become a thorough entertainer.

 Decoupled (TV Series) on Netflix

Decoupled (TV Series) on Netflix

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