It’s easy to suggest that a low-key dramedy about girlhood feels refreshing because it’s written entirely by women.
We’ve seen women-led shows behave like their sensationalist counterparts in an aggressive tit-for-tat way; they tend to be reactionary — a statement to all testosterone-driven productions — rather than natural.
The reason Matargashti works is because it refuses to look like the defiant story of a 19-year-old girl.
Most shows would’ve staged the young and motherless protagonist as a rebel, and her arc as a coming-of-age one.
She’s just a studious student who’s woken up to the temptations of the opposite sex; she’s also just a daughter who still resents her father for sending her away after her mother’s death.
It’s easy to suggest that a low-key dramedy about girlhood feels refreshing because it’s written entirely by women. But that’s a generalisation of sorts. We’ve seen women-led shows behave like their sensationalist counterparts in an aggressive tit-for-tat way; they tend to be reactionary — a statement to all testosterone-driven productions — rather than natural.
The reason Matargashti works is because it refuses to look like the defiant story of a 19-year-old girl. It doesn’t pretend to be the unapologetic female (or feminist) version of those sex comedies featuring funny boys trying to lose their virginity. If anything, it reclaims the diversity of middle-class conflict from the clutches of male-created TVF family universes. You almost don’t expect the setting to be Lucknow. It unfolds like a lightweight antidote, not a conscious subversion, to a genre largely dominated by men.
Most shows would’ve staged the young and motherless protagonist as a rebel, and her arc as a coming-of-age one. But the design is never apparent here. Over five short and sweet episodes, we see this girl, Dhara (Adrija Sinha), succumbing to peer pressure without ever making it seem like she’s acting out or proving a point. She’s just a studious student who’s woken up to the temptations of the opposite sex; she’s also just a daughter who still resents her father for sending her away after her mother’s death. The single dad, Prakash (Rajesh Kumar), struggles to understand a daughter he barely knows; he’s also just a man who misses the wife that offset his distance as a parent.
