a suitable boy review

A Suitable Boy review: An astonishing cast, led by Ishaan Khatter, Tabu and Tanya Maniktala, struggles to make the most of minimal screentime and a … This panoramic portrait of a newly-free nation and fast-changing social segments within it has an easy-flowing quality that belies the sheer magnitude of the exercise." These elites are waited on by battalions of silent servants and with no anxieties about money. Lata, a spirited university student, is preparing for her sister’s arranged marriage as her mother warns her that she, too, “will marry a boy I choose”. With 'A Suitable Boy,' Mira and Nair and Andrew Davies adapt Vikram Seth's 1993 intergenerational saga set during the period after the Partition of India. But The Crown is permitted to move at a stately pace. But I will come back to that. This may be the first Indian period drama of its kind in British TV history, but it remains an India that a British audience is used to seeing. In depicting the dangers of Hindu nationalism, the programme also nods towards modern Indian politics. Amit Chatterji (Mikhail Sen), Lata Mehra (Tanya Maniktala) and Haresh Khanna (Namit Das) in A Suitable Boy. 'A Suitable Boy' review: If only it had been in a suitable language. A Suitable Boy Review: Mira Nair takes you back to the post-independence period with the story of Vikram Seth's drama-crammed novel of the same … It does not get more Pride and Prejudice than a girl being chivvied into marriage by her mum. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. Nair has jokily called A Suitable Boy “The Crown in brown”. critic's rating: 3.0/5. Times Of India. Indian period drama has had a mixed recent history on British TV. Viewers recognise the titles, but haven’t formed strong opinions on the contents. “I don’t think I ever want to get married,” says Lata, to the horror of Rupa, who wastes no time in enlisting the rest of the family to pair off this maverick. But in many ways Davies is the most suitable boy. She can barely bring herself to go to a poetry reading with him, let alone risk her family’s censure. There are swathes of brightly covered fabric, pompous uncles and beautiful daughters. Want an ad-free experience?Subscribe to Independent Premium. Naughty boy Maan (played by the Bollywood lead Ishaan Khatter) embarrasses his father, a high-ranking politician, by throwing the home minister into a fountain during Holi festival, then pursuing a ghazal singer, Saeeda, played by the legendary Indian actor Tabu. With 1,349 pages, the English–language book is one of the longest novels published in a single volume. Like The Luminaries, it is more often admired from a safe distance than read. English mingles with Urdu and Hindustani. No, not even one cantankerous dame protecting her fortune from her deathbed. Where, A Suitable Boy presents an orange-filtered fantasy version of India, Booking.com discount code: 10% with Level 1 Genius membership, Use this Debenhams discount and save up to 70% on men's lines - Spring offer, Up to 30% discount with garden offers at Ideal World, Receive a £2 AliExpress promo code with the official App, Argos kids: 25% off PAW Patrol toys, baby & nursery items. Audience Reviews for A Suitable Boy: Season 1. Some people were not happy with the choice of Davies – who is not just a white British writer, but the white British monarch of the period adaptation – to tell this vast story of newly independent India. Their early flirtation is characterised by some unforgivably flat dialogue, as he says simpering things about books and reveals his devil-may-care attitude by sitting on a bench before she has asked him to. It was published in 1993, when the west seemed to wake up to India’s great literary tradition. So when you hear the phrase A Suitable Boy, it’s not hard to imagine what it will entail. (Then Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram came out and was obsessed over by white crusties on their gap years, so it all went sour.) His presence is fair notice that we’ll have to keep waiting for an Indian family saga of rugged verisimilitude. ‘A Suitable Boy’ is set in 1951, in a fictional town in North India, that is still trying to grapple with the aftermath of partition and the ever-simmering undercurrent of religious tensions. There is a lot riding on A Suitable Boy (BBC One), which is a fate that befalls pioneering and overdue series such as this. Aside from any other problems in the relationship, they have no discernible chemistry. So, this six-episode distillation of Vikram Seth’s 1,300-page panorama of post-partition India has to do everything, at once, in multiple territories. A Suitable Boy Critics Consensus. A brief interaction that says so much about colonialism, 50s India, patriarchy and Lata herself. It is a tall order, especially when some were unhappy with aspects of the adaptation before the opening credits rolled. A Suitable Boy- Review Posted by itsmycopyright on October 31, 2020 Based on Vikram Seth’s most popular novel ‘A Suitable Boy’, this web series directed by celebrated director Mira Nair turned out to be an interesting adaptation. Screenplay. It’s refreshing to see Indian period drama grounded in a least a semblance of political reality. Perhaps this quality appeals to TV producers. Most of A Suitable Boy seems pretty Bollywoodised and characters typified and charicaturised. In a positive note, Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV wrote "A Suitable Boy, does not miss a beat in funnelling a massive novel into an intricately stitched, necessarily pared filmed version. “India was free, but the land and the people were divided for ever.” Succinct – and, appallingly, never more true than now. Synopsis:1951. It’s clear that Rupa and Lata’s ideas of suitability will diverge, and it’s not long before the younger woman meets Kabir Durrani (Danesh Razvi), a fellow student who approaches her in the library. The less said about last year’s Beecham House on ITV, the better. “When India became independent in 1947, it was partitioned into two countries,” begins Andrew Davies’s staunchly traditional adaptation, which is directed by Mira Nair and was filmed on location in north India. Take the scene in which Lata argues with her English professor about why TS Eliot – “He’s American, isn’t he?” – is on the syllabus of “British Masters of the 20th Century”, but James Joyce is not. The cast mostly speaks English, with a smattering of Urdu and Hindi, and in India there has been some scoffing at the accents. They are the real attractions and the biggest reason to binge on this adaptation. Suddenly, everyone had a copy of A Suitable Boy, Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance or Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things busting out of their bag. That is the power of this genre, one that my Indian family has gobbled up since my parents first fell for The Barchester Chronicles. ‘A Suitable Boy’: TV Review By Fionnuala Halligan 2020-08-07T12:48:00+01:00 Mira Nair joins forces with Andrew Davies to televise Vikram Seth’s novel set in India of the early 1950s. You might have thought the BBC wouldn’t attempt any feats of precis more audacious than squeezing Eleanor Catton’s 850-page monster into six hours, but it turns out that was just a warm-up. A Suitable Boy review: The Mira Nair series is worth your time The book has enough time and more to get into long, languid, eloquent descriptions of locations, characters, situations; in Mira Nair and Andrew Davies hands, the chop-chop eventually overcomes the choppiness, and becomes its … Channel 4’s Indian Summers in 2015 was glossy but slight. You don't have to see this unless you are fond of the genre or the director or the location. Love match. A temple is built next to a centuries-old mosque and the police open fire and kill peaceful protesters. It was shot on location, so the buildings and landscapes at least look vaguely accurate. There’s one glaring exception, however, which is that the sole credited writer is Andrew Davies, the Viceroy of costume bonkbusters. It is the BBC’s first period drama – in more than half a century of forays into the past in horse and carriage, from where you get a rather restricted view of history – with an entirely south Asian cast and no white characters. Just say the words "A Suitable Boy" and I am transported back into the lives of the main characters, and I still get emotional over the choice the Lata makes. A Suitable Boy Review: A still from the series. The screenwriter of the serie- Andrew Davis, who has tried to cover 1359 pages of Vikram Seth’s 1993 novel A Suitable Boy in … Four large families, the birth of Hindu nationalism, an upcoming general election, the requisite music and dancing and first and foremost – this is India, and a Davies adaptation, after all – a wedding. A Suitable Boy review: Forbidden romance holds up a mirror to the Indian Partition. There is a lot to get through in the first episode. It is beautiful, expensive and groundbreaking in its casting, yet Andrew Davies’s adaptation of Vikram Seth’s tome still feels uncomfortably old-school, Last modified on Mon 27 Jul 2020 22.02 BST. A Suitable Boy book. In newly independent India, passionate literature student Lata Mehra is torn between family duty and the promise of romance as three very different men try to win her heart. Use the HTML below. Where The Luminaries was gloomy and difficult to follow, A Suitable Boy is bright and comprehensible, thanks to Davies’ well trained eye for structure and Nair’s unobtrusive direction. The central theme by itself is non-political – of a mother trying to find her younger daughter a suitable groom, but the sub plots and characterizations are too politically shrill to ignore. We hope he’s not the only suitor. Indian period drama has had a mixed recent history on British TV. Lata is … Lata’s brother in law, Maan Kapoor (Ishaan Katter), falls for a glamorous older singer, Saeeda Bai (Tabu), and there is a surprisingly creepy Oedipal edge to his pursuit. Channel 4’s, There’s one glaring exception, however, which is that the sole credited writer is, How To Build a Girl never quite matches up to the talents of its star, The Kissing Booth 2 isn’t as problematic as its predecessor, at least, Why ‘A Suitable Boy’ is a milestone for Asian representation, After the early exposition, understandable given the number of characters, the programme settles into its stride. A Suitable Boy review – a very British, Indian period drama. Vikram Seth’s most famous novel A Suitable Boy came out in 1993. ‘A Suitable Boy’ review: A lavish, if predictable offering from Mira Nair Mini Anthikad Chhibber October 23, 2020 13:05 IST Updated: October 24, 2020 13:15 IST A Suitable Boy review round-up: Mira Nair's BBC drama series feels 'uncomfortably old school' A Suitable Boy, adapted for screen by Andrew Davies, will soon release in India on Netflix. Jan 16, 2021. A Suitable Boy has to run to keep up. And Davies, who would find an elegant way in adapting the dictionary to reduce it to its dirty words, is masterly at weaving the small thread into the big picture. Season 1 Review: A Suitable Boy arrives with a fresh perspective and charm to spare—even through some of its most difficult storylines. British creators struggle to get past all the tourist-board cliches and creaking colonial buildings. Amid this long year of isolation, such an aesthetic signature practically qualifies as a superpower. It’s a richly composed series whose beats are recognizable and perhaps a bit fantastical, but nevertheless delivers a … This adaptation of Vikram Seth’s epic, 1300-page novel seemed promising, but we’ll have to keep waiting for an Indian family saga of rugged verisimilitude, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. With one daughter paired off, the bride’s widowed mother, Rupa (Mahira Kakkar), a clucking Mrs Bennett type, immediately turns her attention to her younger daughter, Lata (newcomer Tanya Maniktala), a 19-year-old university student who prefers arguing about Joyce to planning her own family. Suitable in nearly every way, you might think. On paper, A Suitable Boy is more promising. Many reviewers have also commented about how this is a sprawling family drama, which almost doesn't do justice to the way you, the reader, infiltrate these characters' lives, and that you learn an awful lot about Indian history. When “A Suitable Boy” was published in 1993, the 1,349-page tome about post-Independence India, written by Vikram Seth, became one of the longest English-language novels in print. Commenting has been disabled at this time but you can still. The love affairs take place against the backdrop of simmering Hindu-Muslim tensions, four years after partition. Close on the tail of The Luminaries comes another six-part, Sunday night adaptation of a Big Novel. A fine ensemble of actors keeps the momentum going even when A Suitable Boy is at its most monotonous. The same professor chiding Lata for choosing Joyce for her dissertation allows a free mingling and interchange of humor between girls and boys enacting a scene from Twelfth Night. The production values are high, the performances poised and the locations stunning, from the dusty markets of Calcutta to the fictional university town of Brahmpur. After all, Seth’s sprawling and deeply humane novel is one of the longest books in English. At more than 1300 pages, A Suitable Boy (BBC One), Vikram Seth’s 1993 epic of forbidden love, is one of the longest single-volume novels ever published in English. “You must help me to find a suitable boy for her,” she says, and we’re up and running. Review. By the end of episode one, Lata (played by the newcomer Tanya Maniktala) has met a thoroughly unsuitable boy: a Muslim. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? There’s dust in the air. Viewers recognise the titles, but haven’t formed strong opinions on the contents. Luckily, the other main relationship is more promising. The production design by Stephanie Carroll and the costumes by Arjun Bhasin accentuate the sense of place and period. Sure enough, the first episode starts at a society wedding, where Savita Mehra (Rasika Dugal) is marrying a university lecturer, Pran Kapoor (Gagan Dev Riar). These are the oddities of the genre: no one spoke Russian in Davies’s War and Peace, either. Perhaps this quality appeals to TV producers. Does A Suitable Boy succeed? It is just that in the midst of our cultural reckoning, the old ways are starting to look downright weird. It deserved at least 12 episodes. The novel follows four families during 18 months, and centres on Mrs. Rupa Mehra's efforts to arrange the marriage of her younger daughter, Lata, to a "suitable boy". While they can’t resist the hoary old attractions of trains and temples – there’s even a Holi festival thrown in – they build a semi-plausible world with a clear story. , it is more often admired from a safe distance than read. Title: A Suitable Boy (2020– ) 5.9 /10. For all its good intentions, this is still an orange-filtered fantasy version of India, where the characters speak English with the same mannered Indian accents and nobody can do anything without a sitar twanging. With 'A Suitable Boy,' Mira Nair and Andrew Davies adapt Vikram Seth's 1993 intergenerational saga set during the period after the Partition of India. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. The director, Mira Nair, who has apparently wanted to film the book since its release, has assembled an almost exclusively Indian cast and crew. After the early exposition, understandable given the number of characters, the programme settles into its stride. It was a different time, and in spirit and tone A Suitable Boy is like a period drama from then. Filmfare. Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? A Suitable Boy is a sprawling show, giving it the feel of a multigenerational series like Downton Abbey. He is handsome, clever and has a wicked cover drive. Read 29 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Adapted from Vikram Seth's bestselling book, the first episode is a joy from start to finish. Where The Luminaries was gloomy and difficult to follow, A Suitable Boy is bright and comprehensible, thanks to Davies’ well trained eye for structure and Nair’s unobtrusive direction. The novel is very happy and consoling, but it is reluctant to commit itself, perhaps not to depth, but to exegesis. A Suitable Boy, interestingly, speaks more to the times in which it was written. British creators struggle to get past all the tourist-board cliches and creaking colonial buildings. A Suitable Boy is set in a newly post-independence, post-partition India. Could anything on such challenging terms? Except – and I guess this is the point – it would never have been made 20 years ago. A Suitable Boy is a novel by Vikram Seth, published in 1993. In the BBC's A Suitable Boy, the pious, stubborn insistence on getting children married off feels caricatured and two-dimensional, as do other characters’ oppositions to it. Great period drama speaks to the times. 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