Four consecutive episodes in the Disney+ Hotstar series My Perfectt Husband are named thus: Unravelling Ties, Past Revealed, Secrets Unveiled, and Revelations Unfold. The fact that all these titles mean almost the same thing serves as a subtle warning to the unbelievably senseless material that will follow, where absolutely nothing works.
Let's take the first few scenes, for example. Sathyaraj plays Bharathi, a creepy psychology professor and probably the most unfit person ever to be teaching psychology. He is shown holding a book titled Introduction to Psychology, but it's safe to say the man probably never opened even the first page, given how ridiculously insensitive and ignorant he is throughout the series. Sample these lines, from Bharathi to two of his fellow female professors: “Vimala, it looks like you’ve put on weight. Aren’t you going for walks? No excuses. Only if you keep yourself fit and in control will your age not show. Look at Mary Miss, for example. She walks 2 kilometres every day to her bus.” When Mary Miss asks him why he knows this information, Bharathi tells her that only then will she feel like he is alongside her while she is walking on the road. The last line sent shivers down my spine, but the background music confuses the whole thing as comedy (the subtitle reads, ‘flirtatious music’). Oh, and of course, Vimala develops a crush on Bharathi—who wouldn’t?
Every single idea in My Perfectt Husband is handled either in the most weird or uninteresting way possible. Bharathi being a creep who flirts with other women is established way before his wife, Saraswathi (Seetha), gets to know about it. Saraswathi may be shocked when she finally finds this out, but by the time the plot trods along to this point, the viewer’s patience is running on negative. The marriage angle around which the plot revolves could have been impactful had it been a love marriage, so that we see what it means for the couple to make sacrifices. It is written as an arranged marriage where they've just met each other, and this reduces the stakes to almost zero. Decisions like these make My Perfectt Husband so boring that watching it could make the life of a comatose person sound interesting.
The series also makes a great effort to make its characters as illogical as possible. Varsha Bollamma plays Deepika, the love interest of Bharathi’s son, Vaseegaran (Rakshan). She has a line that goes something like, “I had a breakup, but it was very smooth. I was totally fine, the relationship was barely a flash." In the very next line, she says, “After that, I didn’t want any guys in my life at all.” In one of the many scenes that try to make her come across as chirpy, she does a dab in front of Vaseegaran and says it is equal to hugging. Deepika here is one of the most coherent characters in the series, which has every imaginable type of poor characterisation. There's one younger sister who exists for the sole reason of irritating the viewer (oh, wait, there are two), a brother whose hair length randomly changes in every scene (at least the guy is handed very little of the unbearably absurd dialogue), a father who just stares at everyone blankly in his scenes (and that somehow becomes the best performance in this collection of terrible performances).
Every attempt at cracking a joke fails, and there are countless such attempts. Every dialogue has multiple reaction shots. Scenes that don’t matter at all are shot as if everything rides on them. Saraswathi gets out of a car, walks along a corridor, goes inside a room, and death-stares at Bharathi, all in slow motion with thundering music. Only for the scene to be cut away to them having a casual conversation in a car. Two people sharing chapathis with each other is shown as the most romantic thing ever. The whole scene is just them eating the chapathis. One character tells another, “Don’t cry; I can’t take it if you cry,” when the character is not even crying. Were they going for a TV-serial-like approach? If so, why is there no zest, no drama, no tension? It’s difficult to make sense of anything here.
The story is outdated, but even outdated concepts can be made fresh by giving them new spins. However, the series seems completely lost on how to go about the proceedings. A married man going on dates with other women, blatantly lying to his wife, and gleefully basking in the memories of his ex-lover that he just got in touch with is all treated as comedy. The screenplay is so manipulative and predictable that we can see what's coming from three episodes before.
The only thing at least trying to do something interesting is the camera. We’re shown a conversation in one stationary boat from an approaching boat. We’re shown two characters sitting in a swing from the top. Even though there isn’t any meaning behind this, it at least helps distract from the mess that’s transpiring. So maybe that's something.
Just before the last episode, Bharathi says, “We just began. We should run only from now, for half an hour at least". A newfound sense of dread enters the viewer's mind.
PS: The best parts of watching My Perfectt Husband were the advertisements that came in between on Hotstar. Such life-saving respites.
My Perfectt Husband
Director: Tamira
Cast: Sathyaraj, Varsha Bollamma, Aajeedh Khalique, Rakshan, Livingston, Seetha, Reshma Pasupuleti
Rating: 1/5