Made In Heaven 2 Review: Mix Of Drama, Humour And Vibrant Performances

The long-awaited new season of Amazon Prime Video's Made In Heaven, which catches up with wedding planners Tara and Karan six months after the events of the opening season, is an entertaining, if at times sobering, mix of drama, humour, essential home truths and vibrant performances.

Released four and a half years ago, the nine-part first season had struck an instant chord with the audience. The lively and stylishly mounted exploration of contemporary relationships and social dynamics seen through the prism of urban, upper-class, extravagant marriages was always going to be a hard act to follow. Showrunners Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti pull it off with flair.

Set in Delhi, where change rarely keeps up with the pace of life and conservatism and penumbral greys always lurk behind a facade of modernity, the seven new episodes centre on another slew of families and couples looking for unions of true minds - and souls - and straying into slippery areas.

Tara Khanna (Sobhita Dhulipala) and Karan Mehra (Arjun Mathur) return to the business of planning weddings for an elite clientele. The initial feeling is that time has stood still for the two. Only, the constant tussle between the heart and the head, between principles and self-preservation, has turned that much more complex in the intervening months.

The company is floundering, profits are proving to be elusive, big fat weddings of the kind that could turn things around are scarce, and the clients, no matter how small-scale their events are, are as demanding as ever.

With episodes directed by Nitya Mehra (one), Alankrita Shrivastava (two), Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti in tandem (two) and Neeraj Ghaywan (two), much of the new season bears the signature that lent the inaugural lot of episodes their zing - a combination of style, earnestness and an occasional hint of subversion.

What has changed for the series, created by Akhtar and Kagti and scripted by the duo with Shrivastava, is the addition of Ghaywan as a director. The maker of Masaan helms two norm-defying, clutter-breaking episodes. Of course, part of the credit for the high notes must accrue to the writers.

One of Ghaywan's two episodes centres on the father of a bride and the mother of a groom who are in an extra-marital relationship that has rekindled a college romance and now threatens to derail the wedding of their children.

The other episode, radically different from anything that we have seen before on an OTT platform, features Pallavi Menke (Radhika Apte), an Ivy League professor, who, when we first see her, spells out what it means to be a Dalit in India. We learn along the way that she has authored a book on the intersectionality of caste and gender.

The family of the hotshot upper-caste NRI lawyer she is about to marry insists on a traditional ceremony. She agrees, but demands a Dalit Buddhist wedding in addition. Her wish sets the cat among the pigeons and triggers a debate.

"We have so much to learn from you," an impressed Tara says to the assertive Pallavi. She could well have paid the same compliment to Meher Chaudhary, a transgender woman (Trinetra Haldar) who works for her company. The latter objects vehemently when Tara calls the upper caste ceremony the "main wedding". Tara is forced to take back the term.

Talking of pushing boundaries, MIH S2 delves deeper into same-sex relationships and the assertion of sexual identities than it did the first time around and, even more strikingly, casts a transgender actor to play a career woman who has had a gender reassignment surgery and is proud of who she is.

MIH S2, like the first season did, addresses a wide range of themes. It concludes each chapter with an apt homily (it stops well short of being preachy) directed at women who allow societal expectations to snuff out their aspirations and desires. One episode focuses on a case of polygamy that tests the endurance of a Muslim woman (Dia Mirza) whose husband (Pravin Dabas) takes a second wife. Another episode revolves around a same-sex "commitment ceremony" involving two women battling prejudices like modern-day "warrior princesses".

Away from the subject of marital vows and discord - the latter is represented principally by the complicated divorce settlement negotiations between Adil Khanna (Jim Sarbh) and Tara - an important strand of MIH S2 revolves around a 15-year-old schoolgirl (only mentioned, not seen) who accuses a handful of boys in her class of molesting and blackmailing her. How the parents react to the allegation forms the crux of this sub-plot.

An about-to-be-married girl breaks out in a rash after an ill-advised skin-lightening treatment goes awry, a divorced woman who is set to remarry has to contend with a depressed son who misses his father to the point of hating his mom, and a sprightly 35-year-old woman (Sarah Jane Dias), in the midst of plans to wed a much younger boy (Imaad Shah), masterminds a twist in the tale that nobody sees coming.

As the weddings that they handle pose their own share of problems and the company grapples with dwindling returns and internal contradictions, Tara and Karan are up against their own struggles. Tara has a new boyfriend in chef Raghav Sinha (Ishwak Singh) while contending with the aggravating presence of her one-time best friend and her estranged husband's lover Faiza Naqvi (Kalki Koechlin).

Karan, still under a monetary debt that demands desperate measures, sees his relationship with his terminally ill mom souring drastically. Their individual flaws come to the fore as they try to make the most of the not-so-strong cards in their hands.

Ramesh Jauhari (Vijay Raaz), from whose old bungalow the cash-strapped Made in Heaven now functions, sends in his wife Bulbul (Mona Singh, an addition to the cast) to oversee the expenses of the struggling firm. Bulbul's obstructionist approach sets her on a collision course with Tara and Karan.

Kabir Basrai (Shashank Arora), the company's official videographer and aspiring filmmaker, and middle-class Dwarka girl Jaspreet "Jazz" Kaur (Shivani Raghuvanshi) watch with growing consternation as the problems multiply.

The hiring of Meher becomes a major bone of contention between the new, ultra-nosey auditor and the two longtime friends who launched the company. The transwoman's progress constitutes one key strand of the plot. She goes about proving her usefulness to the business.

Meher evolves over the seven episodes of MIH S2, as does Mona, who starts off on the wrong foot with the Made in Heaven staff but then not only develops a bonding with them but also reveals a generous, remarkably progressive side to her.

Consistently affecting performances from the principal cast, the supporting actors and the new additions, especially Trinetra Haldar and Mona Singh, contribute to making this season of betrothals, break-ups and breakthroughs highly watchable and thought-provoking.