Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives – Yea or Nay?

I have a general disinterest in reality shows of all types; mainly because I find them mind-numbingly boring. I forced myself to watch a few episodes of the Netflix reality show Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives only as a means to educate myself about how these shows work. Turns out, the show is quite as expected – all first world ‘problems’.  Here is what audiences and reviewers have to say about Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives:

They are the wives of Sanjay Kapoor, Sohail Khan, Chunky Pandey and Sameer Soni. They are Maheep, Seema, Bhavana and Neelam respectively.

The women seem to be concerned mainly with their petty little quarrels, lusting over the occasional younger man, looking young and thin and attractive. There is a breathtaking amount of self-obsession on display. The women are always, always, always expensively dressed, perfectly made up and blow-dried.

This is the sort of conversations the women have – they ‘stress’ about what to wear for a ball, about whether to return to acting, about not being able to converse in Hindi with the house-help – those are their hardships.

The show receives almost uniformly bad reviews. Not least because the portrayed women and their families seem so completely divorced from the realities of the India they live in.  

So there is Sanjay Kapoor breathlessly asking for a picture with Jet Li. And there is a beach cleanup where people turn up in heels and designer clothing.

The elitism and crass classism on display put off many.

So, yesteryear starlet Neelam keeps talking about returning to films. Shanaya, the daughter of Sanjay and Maheep Kapoor takes it for granted that she will be starring in a film soon. She acts as though her appearance at some coming out ball in Paris is nothing less than her due.

…From their cushy lives. This was a holiday in Doha, Qatar; a place duly showcased as a great vacation destination. I am pretty sure the show received a generous sponsorship from the Qatar tourism ministry.

Arjun Kapoor, Jahnvi Kapoor, Karan Kapoor, Ekta Kapoor, Raveena Tandon, Sidharth  Malhotra and others made guest appearances at various points in the series.

We are told that these women have been friends for 25 years. Strangely, they can fall out and fight over the most insignificant of things.

Neelam’s not-quite-identifiable accent sounds very strange to say the least.

For many viewers and most reviewers, the show was quite unbearable for a hundred different reasons.

This is currently the number one show on Netflix India. So clearly, there are a lot of people who want a peek into the lives of some privileged women looking to validate their lives. Maybe for some, this is a guilty pleasure they don’t want to admit to?

The final episode of the Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives series features Bollywood’s No 1 couple – Shah Rukh Khan and Gauri Khan. Some just skipped to that – that bit was passably watchable for them.