Throughout my life I have lived for others. First for my mother, then for my fans, then for my husband and now my children. Why shouldn’t I live for myself, for a change?” One can, well, feel the emotions of every woman when Madhuri Dixit mouths this dialogue at one of the poignant moments of The Fame Game with which she has made her digital debut. You can also draw parallels with at least a couple of prominent real-life actresses who found themselves in front of the spotlight at a very young age and continued to live for name, fame and glamour through their lifetime.
What makes it special though is the manner in which a suspense drama is curated around the proceedings. It is established right at the beginning that Madhuri Dixit, pretty much playing herself as Anamika, has been kidnapped from her sprawling bungalow and just about everyone around her is a suspect. Be it her husband (Sanjay Kapoor), ex-lover (Manav Kaul), children (Muskkaan Jaferi, Lakshvir Saran), her stalker fan (Gagan Arora), an admirer (Makrand Deshpande), a sleazy financier—just everyone is a suspect.
Due to an ensemble of characters, each one of whom has a motive to benefit from Anamika, as a viewer you keep joining the dots to unravel the mystery yourself. That said, there are several open spaces in between the narrative that allow you so much of thinking time that at certain places you do gain an idea around why and what of affairs. Now if only the pace would have been tighter for The Fame Game, the drama more intense and the thrills more chilling, the end result would have been even more satisfying.
Still, there is ample ammunition in there which makes you binge watch the show. With Rajshri Deshpande as the cop for whom Dixit is just a victim, you want to join her in the journey to unravel the mystery. No wonder, eventually it all turns out to be about the star and the actions that take place around her, and less about anyone else in the show. Yes, you would have liked more histrionics from Dixit. She emotes, gets angered, feels distraught, oozes love and well, even gets to dance to the kind of tune that would have made for a 90s hit. However, how you wish that there were a couple of scenes at least where she got into a full-on powerhouse performance, something that is pulled back. As for the others in the fray, Kapoor is the best of the lot as an opportunistic husband while Jaferi comes on her own towards the later part of the series. Kaul does well too in a brief role.
Once you are a star, you can’t let go of fame ever—that’s one of the key themes of this Karan Johar production which has to be one of the better web series to be arriving on Indian OTT recently. While crime and thrills seem to be flavour of at least 7 out of 10 web series, The Fame Game is one of those rare offerings which has a family drama at the core of it all. —Joginder Tuteja
The fame game