Pankaj Tripathi's 'Perfect Family' Web-series Review: Manoj Pahwa and Gulshan Devaiah shine in this innocuous, imperfect show

Cast: Neha Dhupia, Manoj Pahwa, Seema Pahwa, Gulshan Devaiah, Girija Oak Godbole, Kaveri Seth, Hirva Trivedi, Ronav Vaswani

Director: Sachin Pathak

Language: Hindi

It seems that it is not enough to make a film about dysfunctional families. We now need to make shows. Shows that can delve deeper and darker. Shows that can hinge on cliffhangers and chaos. Dil Dhadakne Do and _Kapoor and Sons_ walked and how! But they were neatly packaged ideas that propagated what Kader Khan mastered back in the 80s. Every next film of the legendary writer was about a dysfunctional and imperfect family. And now comes a show called Perfect Family. Ironic? Yes! The cast is infectious to watch. Manoj Pahwa, Seema Pahwa, Gulshan Devaiah, Girija Oak. Take the subscription already. And the cherry on the cake is that it’s produced by Pankaj Tripathi.

Perfect Family begins the way it should. Imperfectly. A screechy altercation between a father and his son. Manoj Pahwa is a lesser comical portrait of what he did in _The Ba\*\*\*Ds Of Bollywood_. Seema Pahwa is a heightened version of Shefali Shah from Dil Dhadakne Do but still adorable to watch as always. And Gulshan Devaiah continues to throw himself in different worlds and characters with ease. There seems to be no fussiness about him. There’s the restrained Neha Dhupia too. She plays a therapist. This family happens to be a volcano and she is the one who can extinct it. So she suggests them therapy.

More from Entertainment

Dhanush & Kriti Sanon’s ‘Tere Ishk Mein’ Movie Review: Little too noisy love story; STOP normalising violence Manish Malhotra's ‘Gustaakh Ishq’ Movie Review: Naseeruddin Shah stole limelight along with Vijay Varma, Fatima Sana Shaikh & Sharib Hashmi in this intoxicatingly beautiful film

Director Sachin Pathak wants to establish a sense of discomfort in the family, no matter if the members are alone or together. So he films multiple tight close-ups that convey their jadedness and jitteriness. What the series also establishes is that fate spares no one, not even kids. Everybody seems to be sailing in the same boat. There are comical touches in between, but it does not border on farce. It is impossible to expect a perfect show that talks about an imperfect family. And most of the boxes have already been ticked before. But you still get a sense of discomfort that this should not happen with you or anybody that happens to be close to you.

We recently saw a show called _Thode Door Thode Paas_ where the patriarch of the family asked its members to bid adieu to technology if they wanted to inherit his fortune. It was nothing but an idea to bring them together. Perfect Family chooses the conflict of therapy. This is something that cannot make things better, but the people better. You cannot control the things that happen, but the reaction can always be under your control. Like they say- we write our own destinies. So favour the fun of Perfect Family and its imperfections.

Rating: 2.5 (out of 5 stars)

Perfect Family will stream on JAR Series official YouTube channel