‘Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo’ series review: Dimple Kapadia anchors this quirky, uneven series

Dimple Kapadia in ‘Saas Bahu aur Flamingo’
| Photo Credit: YouTube/DisneyPlus Hotstar

In the iconic opening shot of Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 1 (2012), a television screen playing Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi is blown to bits by incoming gunfire. The scene served as a mission statement: Wasseypur is going to be a family saga like no other. Now, 11 years later, Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo signals something similar with its title. The series — directed by Homi Adajania and streaming on Disney+ Hotstar — is also about a family engaged in an illicit trade. The only difference is that, unlike Anurag Kashyap’s bloodied epic of lusty coal smugglers, the protagonists in this show are female. Imagine if Nagma, Mohsina and Shama ran a clandestine drug cartel that Sardar Khan, Faizal and Danish had no clue about.

Savitri (Dimple Kapadia) runs ‘Rani Co-operative’, producing handicrafts and medicinal herbs. She’s matriarch and godmother to the womenfolk of Hastipur, a fictional frontier town in northwest India. The co-operative, we quickly learn, is a cover; Savitri’s real business is cocaine. She is helped in her operations by her daughter, Shanta (Radhika Madan), and two daughters-in-law, Kajal (Angira Dhar) and Bijlee (Isha Talwar). When an adulterated version of their signature ‘Flamingo’ product puts a politician’s son in coma, Savitri realizes there’s hell to pay. Various vultures come circling in, including deadpan anti-narcotics officer Proshun (Jimit Trivedi) and a dead-eyed rival named ‘Munk’ (Deepak Dobriyal).

An early ambush that Savitri and her coterie successfully foil at their haveli — fighting with knives, flower vases and random trinkets — signals the revisionist stance the series is primed to take. Yet, as it progresses, we realize Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo is drawing more from daily soap operas than it is critiquing. Savitri is addressed by her adherents as ‘Rani baa’ (an alternative title for the show could have been Baa, Bahu Aur Kiwi). When her sons — oblivious corporate workers from the US — turn up for Janmashtami, the series wends its way into a succession drama. Some of the interpersonal rivalries are very TV serial-like; Savitri even has an adoptive son, not unlike Tulsi Virani in Kyunki.

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Homi and his writers try to shake off this sense of familiarity with a lot of edginess. Bijlee and her husband (a delightfully zonked-out Ashish Verma) are cheating on each other; she’s in a lesbian relationship with a Mumbai DJ. Shanta and Dhiman (Udit Arora, the aforementioned third son) are sexually and emotionally involved. A reference, perhaps, was the incestuous relationship between Cersei and Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones. However, unlike those spirited twins, Shanta and Dhiman aren’t blood siblings — this is about as far as Indian streaming platforms are willing to go in 2023.

Much more engaging, then, are the nods to technology and globalization in this grainy borderlands drama. This is classic Homi territory; a well-traveled Bombay boy, he’s best when blurring the distances between urban, semi-urban, and metropolitan India. Updating the pagers from Gangs of Wasseypur, his characters roam about with headphones, smartwatches and VR headsets. We witness money laundering via cryptocurrency. In a touching detail, Savitri surveys the stars at night with an expensive-looking telescope. She’s taught herself English; her children can use phrases like ‘catch-22’ and ‘shoot the messenger’ around her without translating.

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Kapadia holds the show together. She portrays Savitri as tensile but tough, her pluckiness and tenacity indicated by how she stamps out candles by hand. Isha Talwar as Bijlee matches up to her lived-in ferocity; I can’t say the same about Madan’s and Dhar’s performances. The series is entertaining for its mollycoddling (in a mocking way) of fragile male egos. “I kept sending mom 500 dollars each month,” Savitri’s younger son (Varun Mitra) complains upon discovering she runs a multi-crore empire. “In a mother’s eye it’s all the same,” Kajal reassures him.

Not everything works. There are standoffs and deaths (especially near the end) that feel contrived. The interlude where we learn Savitri’s backstory is probably the most gripping in the series. The passage is notable for its straightforwardness; Homi, for once, isn’t trying to amuse or dress up scenes with witty embellishments. The trouble is, it’s his innate quirkiness that marks him out as a filmmaker. We want him to learn how to tell his stories straight. But we also want scenes where a cop chases a dog with a severed hand in its mouth.