The moment we had feared is upon us: Ketan Mehta’s popular television show Mr Yogi, based on a novel by Madhu Rye, has been retooled for a new-old generation.
In the 10-episode series The Great Weddings of Munnes, out on Voot Select, we are in the present as well as a time when a godman stands in the way of a pair of lovebirds.
Mathura residents Munnes (Abhishek Banerjee) and Mahi (Barkha Singh) are going to exchange garlands when the godman (Pankaj Berry) declares that Munnes will die if he goes through with the ritual. The seer’s predictions are never wrong.
Of course there’s an exit route: if Munnes finds another woman to marry and then divorces her immediately... You get the picture.
Rather than planting a well-aimed blow on the godman’s rear, Munnes and his family set out to meet an array of candidates, each of whom proves to be unsuitable in one way or another. Why is it that you always attract runaway girls – are you a marathon, someone asks, but the question isn’t quite clear, just as the attempts at humour are often dodgy.
Do we, in 2022, need Indian actors blackening their faces to pass themselves off as Africans? Where is youthful rebellion when you need it?
Created by Comedy Circus veteran and Dream Girl director Raaj Shaandilyaa, the series has been directed by Sunil Sambrani. The show is spilling over with the kind of broad situational humour and hysterical characters that have come to characterise fiction set in North Indian cities.
Abhishek Banerjee is a hardsell as a leading man who is unable to snag a bride but manages to steal the comely and wealthier Mahi’s heart. A casting director turned actor (best known for Paatal Lok), Banerjee isn’t quite Jitendra Kumar, just as The Great Weddings of Munnes isn’t exactly a show that reinvents what we know about the Indian obsession with marriage.
