When the creators of two iconic Indian television shows, Sarabhai vs Sarabhai and Khichdi, come together for another comedy about the oddities of family life, expectations are inevitably high. Yet Chumbak, created by Aatish Kapadia and JD Majethia, struggles to deliver the same wit, warmth or entertainment. Framed as a story within a book, with the opening set at a book launch, the show unfolds in Chembur’s Chumbak Colony, where five families live cheek by jowl. The premise is simple: as neighbours navigate their everyday troubles, they gradually become a family, coming together to solve one another’s problems. The trouble is that the problems themselves—and how the characters actually resolve them—remain frustratingly vague. The result is a comedy built around a promising premise that never quite finds its comic rhythm.
The storytelling is vague and fragmented. The show introduces too many characters and subplots at once, without giving the viewer enough reason to care about any of them. Before one can establish a connection with the characters, the central problem is already introduced: Rajni, played by Neena Gupta, wants to divorce Kuku (Deven Bhojani), her husband who suffers from memory loss. In another house, children are rebelling against their parents; elsewhere, a pet dies. The problems keep piling up, but nothing ties them together. Instead of creating a lively portrait of a neighbourhood, the show creates information overload, making it difficult to stay invested even after the first episode. At times, Chumbak’s tropes are reminiscent of Sarabhai vs Sarabhai, but they rarely land. The show never really establishes the kind of comedy it wants to create, leaving the jokes feeling dated, hackneyed, and predictable. Then there are the familiar clichés: a man dressed in a sari, the supposed crime of saying “vegetable biryani”, and husbands forgetting their wives’ names.
The cast is the only saving grace, carrying the show despite the writing. Unfortunately, the roles are reduced to little more than their quirks. Priyanka (Manasi Parekh), the hysterical wife, is always loud, with little else to her character. Dharmendra (Sumeet Raghavan), an actor-comedian who dresses up as women, is similarly defined almost entirely by his profession. Freddy (Anant Vijay Joshi) combines two stereotypes: a Parsi man with a caricatured accent and a mama’s boy. There is potential in these performances, but the writing does little to develop the people behind the quirks.
The eight episodes released so far end on a cliffhanger, suggesting that there is more chaos to come in Chumbak Colony. But it is difficult to tell if this chaos might lead to anything interesting. Weak humour on top of an even weaker storyline makes the Chumbak ship sink. The show sets out to depict how neighbours come closer by helping each other through their problems, but neither that idea nor the comedy is developed enough to make the premise work. Chumbak ultimately illustrates how even a talented cast cannot make up for weak storytelling. They make the show bearable—hardly—but not memorable.