Are You Ready for Netflix’s Cringe-and-Binge Worthy ‘Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives’?
- A mix of a desi "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" meets "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills," this series is bound to catch the attention and imagination of viewers, young and old alike.
After its success with Indian Matchmaking, Netflix recently released the trailer of its next reality series coming out of B-Town — Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives. So get comfortable, grab your gal pals and the popcorn and give into your guilty pleasure – the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
You’ve seen them on Page Three, strutting down the streets of Mumbai in the latest couture, cheering on their B-Town husbands and kids, and expertly juggling their roles as wives, mothers, friends, and boss ladies. Now, you will get a chance to know these ladies, up close and personal.
So walk into the homes and lives of actress Neelam Kothari (wife of Samir Soni), Maheep Kapoor (wife of Sanjay Kapoor), Seema Khan (Sohail Khan’s better half) and Bhavana Pandey (Chunkey Pandey’s wife) to see what makes these ladies so much more than the stereotypical housewife. A mix of a desi Keeping Up With The Kardashians meets Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, this series is bound to catch the attention and imagination of viewers, young and old alike.
Bound by a friendship that dates back 25 years, this girl gang is like no other. The trailer introduces the four as Bollywood wives living in the lap of luxury life in Mumbai. They drive around in a Rolls Royce, call each other ‘stupid cows,’ send DMs to Kim Kardashian, snoop on their neighbors, laugh at the film scripts offered to them and, of course, there is the good ol’ fighting at the dinner table. All this, while maintaining that they live very ordinary lives.
The narrator — who appears to be Maheep Kapoor, begins the trailer by saying: “People have this misconception about us that we have these ‘Oh so glamorous lives’ but that’s not really true. Our lives can be quite mundane.” Then she goes on to say: “Of course we go shopping in a Rolls-Royce… is there any other mode of transportation?”
“Bound by a friendship that dates back 25 years, this girl gang is like no other. With a surplus of sass and a whole lot of outrageous fun, these women sure know how to have a good time. Follow them as they go about managing their lives, kids, businesses and, most importantly, each other,” adds the statement with the trailer.
Even Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, his wife Gauri Khan, who is part of the girl gang Bhavana’s daughter Ananya, Sanjay and Samir have cameos. There are lavish holidays, ogling at shirtless servers, men who stalk them and more to keep you coming back week after week.
Although the series may get a little cringe worthy and pretentious at times, some viewers are still excited for it.
“This is trash. Can’t wait to watch it,” read a comment on YouTube.
“This is stupid but I will watch it,” read another.
Twitter user Zenobia posted, “I know I’m going to be watching Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives when it releases.”
Others were still a bit wary if a concept like this will work in India.
Within an hour of the trailer’s release, on YouTube, it received slightly more ‘likes’ than ‘dislikes,’ with viewers calling out Netflix for “trash content.”
“Do we really need these kinds of shows?” asked an Instagram user on Netflix’s post.
“Glamour does not work for India, richness is considered as a punch in the face of people who still live in poverty, I appreciate Netflix India for including a Keep up With The Kardashians kind of concept in the genre, still, we got very few audiences here for this, things majority of people watch in a developed country is very different from a developing one. I wish Netflix good luck for this start, hope you find more areas to expand in India,” the comment read.
Anmol Jamwal wrote on Twitter, “Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives is India’s version of guilty pleasure, but nauseatingly privileged and surface level reality television like The Real Housewives Series.”
Ashwini Kulkarni aptly sums up viewer reaction to the series on Twitter – “The perfect example of cringe yet binge!!”
The show will be out on Netflix on November 27.
Anu Ghosh immigrated to the U.S. from India in 1999. Back in India she was a journalist for the Times of India in Pune for 8 years and a graduate from the Symbiosis Institute of Journalism and Communication. In the U.S., she obtained her Masters and PhD. in Communications from The Ohio State University. Go Buckeyes! She has been involved in education for the last 15 years, as a professor at Oglethorpe University and then Georgia State University. She currently teaches Special Education at Oak Grove Elementary. She is also a mom to two precocious girls ages 11 and 6.