The set-up is unusual – a Malayali Christian family in Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh. A railway junction where, a character says, trains only stop at night.
When the Prime Video series Bandwaale opens, David (Ashish Vidyarthi), the principal of the local college is incandescent with rage because an anonymous poem about a kiss has been confiscated, and this sort of thing cannot happen on his watch. The poet happens to be his own daughter Mariam (Shalini Pandey), prone to penning childish rhymes in a diary.
Mariam’s younger sister Cynthia (Sanjana Dipu) thinks Mariam has great talent, and sets up a channel for her to recite her verse with her face hidden since the father is conservative and ill-tempered. The mother Valsala (Anupama Kumar) is terrorised into submission. David is the kind of man who forces a fellow (Devendra Ahirwar) who fancies his daughter into unpaid slavery as her “rakhi brother”.
The sisters are dim enough to believe that the poems can make Mariam an influencer and earn enough money to get Cynthia to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since her channel gets hardly any followers, Mariam decides that her poems ought to be set to music and approaches the town’s star brass band singer Robo Kumar (Swanand Kirkire).
Unbeknownst to Mariam, the long-haired, middle-aged and portly man has fallen in love with her. His entourage of musicians start calling her “bhabhi” and keeping an eye on her.
The collaboration with Robo does not work, so Mariam thinks she might make an offer to the mysterious DJ Psycho (Zahan Kapoor) in the barsaati next door, whose techno beats appeal to her.
Rafi (Vikram Kochhar), son of the band’s owner Ismail (Robin Das), wants to update the band too and hires Psycho. Robo and his gang of clowns are immediately alert to the possibility of the young man romancing Mariam.
However, David decides that it is time Miriam was married. He summons his brother Sebi (Naushad Mohammed Kunju) from Kerala with a list of suitable boys and decides that Roysten (Addis Akkara) is the man for Mariam. Meanwhile, Mariam registers for an influencers’ competition, with Robo and Psycho as her band members.
Bandwaale is written by Swanand Kirkire and Ankur Tewari and directed by Akshat Verma (with one episode out of eight helmed by Tewari). The show teeters between comedy, farce and melodrama.
In between David’s machinations and Mariam’s hopes for a career as an influencer, the series derails into absurd subplots that have no bearing on anything else going on in the family. If there’s a melodramatic misunderstanding over a pregnancy, there’s also a crazy rescue from a charlatan’s clinic.
If there’s anything remotely interesting about Bandwaale, it is a look at how young people in small towns pursue the opportunities offered by new technology. The germ of this idea is lost in the shenanigans of Robo and his cohorts. Kirkire is a decent comic actor but a romantic hero (even a delusional one) he is not. Shalini Pandey wears mostly one sullen expression. Zahan Kapoor has the kind of role he might be embarrassed about later.
The Malayalam-speaking actors in supporting roles lend the show a degree of authenticity, which the helter-skelter script with inexplicable twists fails to achieve.
Just 0.2% of readers pay for news. The others don’t care if it dies. You can help make a difference. Support independent journalism – join Scroll now.
We’re not driven by clicks or corporate interests – just honest, independent reporting. Keep us going. Support Scroll today!