Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives on Netflix is not quite fabulous

Gurnaaz Kaur

Reality show on Netflix, Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives will give you an insight into the lives of Maheep Kapoor, wife of Sanjay Kapoor, Neelam Kothari Soni, wife of Sameer Soni, Bhavana Pandey, wife of Chunky Pandey and Seema Khan, wife of Sohail Khan. Before we start, did we know about them before the show?

Reality series: Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives  

Director: Uttam Domale

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Cast: Neelam Kothari, Maheep Kapoor, Bhavna Pandey and Seema Khan

Rating: **

Therefore, will it be right to ask why these four Bollywood wives and why not the likes of Gauri Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Kiran Rao? This reality show, based on the template of Keeping Up With Kardashians, hardly reveals anything interesting about the lives of the leads.

Maheep is a stalker. She has binocular to peep into her neighbourhood. She cannot complete a sentence without using the ‘F’ word or other such adjectives. Seema Khan is a fashion designer. Her marriage with Sohail, as she puts it, is not a conventional one. They stay separately, but are a unit nevertheless. How that works is only known to the two of them because like all other meaty angles, this too has been brushed under the carpet.

Bhavana Pandey, as her friends call her, is always sitting on the fence, is a people-pleaser and handles situations diplomatically. She loves her daughters and husband; dreams to expand her fashion-wear brand. She is superstitious, believes in astrology and would rather prefer Reiki healing as anti-ageing therapy for her skin than get some fillers or Botox done.

Neelam is a ‘prim and proper’ mother, wife and jewellery designer. At this point in life, other than taking the decision of inserting steroids to make her skin look young, she is in a constant debate with herself on whether she should get back to acting or continue being a jewellery designer. She takes advice from her friends, including Ekta Kapoor, and we get to know she is getting offers for various roles, including that of a mother, and has fans in other countries, even after being out of scene for over two decades.

Occasionally it feels like the show is launchpad for Neelam. Not to be missed, their Zindagi Na MilegiDobara moments, as these four Bollywood wives plan a trip to Doha. You’ll get reminded of Sex and the City 2 here, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t keep you engaged. Yes, there is nothing new or fabulous about the show as such. There’s hardly any spontaneity to a show that is about real people and their lives. It’s all too planned and choregraphed in the Karan Johar way. Karan Johar makes appearances at two points. He asks, “Why should I watch a show about four women who don’t have jobs? Why are these pre-menopausal women getting on my nerves? They pretend they work, but what do they actually do?”

You’ll be asking these questions, too, for sure.