Potluck review: Mildly entertaining series with very little to sink your teeth into

Language: Hindi, English A family that eats together stays together. That is the basis of a weekly Sunday potluck initiated by Govind (Jatin Sial), the patriarch of the Shastri family. Besides Govind and his wife Pramila (Kitu Gidwani), the family comprises their two sons Vikrant (Cyrus Sahukar) and Dhruv (Harman Singha) with their respective wives Akanksha (Ira Dubey) and Nidhi (Salonie Patel), and their daughter Prerna (Shikha Talsania), who is an aspiring writer and dating app regular. The grandchildren, while around, are not always invited to the lunch table. The eight-episode sitcom opens with the family discussing how the weekly family potluck has chased away happiness, a fallout of the unearthing of a huge fraud aimed at keeping the family close.   Each crisp 25-minute episode is confined to potluck Sunday during which there is usually some minor drama that collides when all the family members gather for lunch. Directed by Rajshree Ojha, in the series written by Ashwin Lakshmi Narayan, Bharat Misra, and Gaurav Lulla, there is very little to skin your teeth into.

Lightly seasoned, Potluck makes a bigger comment on fragmenting modern families but its ingredients are rather basic.  

There is the overbearing mother, a retired and restless father, a successful younger son, and a less successful older son who has opted to be a house husband. The daughter is a bit of a rebel without a cause, who has recently returned to live with her parents. Both the daughters-in-law are independent, working women. So while the issues are fairly mundane, the relaxed repartee and chemistry between the ensemble cast keep the proceedings informal and the writing, while not humorous, is fairly droll. Of the cast, Ira Dubey and Shikha Talsania are especially on point. The family conflicts involve competition between the brothers for a bigger house, between father and son about size of a housewarming gift, between daughter and parents about her new boyfriend, between husbands and wives about secrets, lies, and whimsical hobbies. Even when the tones are soothing, the overenthusiastic coordination between costume (albeit elegant) and art department makes the colour schemes diverting. The Shastris are a fairly conventional upwardly mobile family — not dysfunctional or modern enough to shake things up, yet quirky enough to be mildly entertaining. Potluck is streaming on SonyLIV.