TVF’s ‘Permanent Roommates’ (Season 01 & 02)…A fresh Indian perspective on live-in, marriage; ringing true to the current generation.
I really liked the title of the series, Permanent Roommates. It might be an oversimplification of what marriage means, but remove the families, the rituals, the ceremonies, and it basically boils down to being someone’s roommate for life.
I have been living in a paying guest accommodation for five years now and sharing an apartment and a room with someone has now become a common way of living in the cities of India. Just like how one looks for a compatible marriage partner, it becomes necessary to find a compatible roommate who is easy to live with, helps out in the household chores and pays the bills on time. Hence, Permanent Roommates greatest strength lies in the fact that it is immediately relatable.
The first season concentrates on Mikesh (an adorable Sumeet Vyas), and Tanya (Nidhi Singh), his girlfriend of three years, moving in together, an idea pitched by her dad (Shishir Sharma), a super cool father that is much needed on our televisions, who is not only fine with Tanya moving in with Mikesh, but also lends an ear to all of Mikesh’s complaints, when Tanya breaks up with him.
In the second season, an unplanned pregnancy takes centre stage, and the show tackles the problems or rather the lack of it, with having a baby out of wedlock. It normalizes the situation with excellent characters like Lata Chaundry (Sheeba Chaddha), Mikesh’s mother, who is more worried about Tanya finding out how crazy Mikesh family is than being worried about the fact that her son is in a live-in relationship and upon finding out that Tanya is pregnant, instead of being shaken by the fact that the two have had sex before marriage, she calls her brother, a Obstetrician (a superb Manu Rishi) to check up on Tanya, and asks them to get married as soon as possible.
Even with all this freshness, the show loses its steam in the second season, with episodes dedicated to the pressures of having a big fat Indian wedding, with an evil wedding planner; a lost bag, in which a character redeems his nasty behaviour with a sappy story; an episode about cheating on your spouse, and one on raising children, every opportunity, every event, every incident becomes a lesson for Mikesh and Tanya on married life, having children, which after a point is just too much. The series ends up becoming a list of Tips to become good parents, or Tips to become a good husband/wife.
Thankfully, the show redeems itself in its last episode, focusing only on Tanya and Mikesh, as they try to come terms with a tragedy. If only this sensibility and creative narrative had been present throughout the whole season, I think I would have enjoyed it much much more.
