Bhaag Beanie Bhaag Review: Lack of Humor and Originality lets the Swara Bhaskar Netflix series down, side characters shine through

Bhaag Beanie Bhaag

I’ve been a fan of the show ‘The Marvelous Mrs Maisel’ and have followed the Amazon prime series throughout the three seasons. So, when I saw a news piece on a Netflix show coming up on similar lines, I was immediately interested.

The show Bhaag Beanie Bhaag released on Netflix, starring Swara Bhaskar, Dolly Singh, Ravi Patel, Girish Kulkarni, Mona Ambegaonkar, Varun Thakur and a few others.

It’s a six-episode series, each episode is between 25 and 30 minutes long, so a three hours watch for you. It’s more like watching a really long movie.

Bhaag Beanie Bhaag

The series is about a girl Beanie (Swara Bhaskar) who is an MBA, works in an office (like most of us) and has been dating a nice Punjabi (you’ll know why did I emphasize on the Punjabi) man named Arun, who has just proposed to her for marriage. However, Beanie ain’t too happy about it and wants to pursue her passion of becoming a stand-up Comedian. Beanie gets the wedding jitters, so much so that she flees after her roka for a stand-up gig, her best friend Kapi (Dolly Singh) follows her. You’ll see her struggles and ups as well as downs on her journey to becoming a stand-up Comedian.

Bhaag Beanie Bhaag

Beginning with what are my views regarding this Netflix series. Well, I started to watch it and let me tell you, Mrs Maisel fangirl in me was sobbing really hard. You’ll find so many similarities in both of them that you’ll want to just press the Amazon Prime button on your televisions and go back to rewatching Marvelous Mrs Maisel, and have a good laugh (which was missing here)

There were several things that were wrong with the series. One was the comic timing, I wanted to laugh my guts out watching the series but honestly, there wasn’t a stretch of even two minutes where I did even smile enough. The stand-up comedy bit has been so underused, I mean, I wanted to see several of her stand up shows because that’s what the series is about right?

Bhaag Beanie Bhaag

Oh and the entire conundrum around Shaadi, someone please give me a break. I do not understand as to why are marriages shown to look so negative for a girl. Some people do have happy marriages, deal with it.

The side characters seem to have made an impression. I did like Dolly Singh, mostly because I’ve followed her journey from iDiva to become a supporting character in a Netflix series. Even though she’s been funnier in her iDiva videos, she’s still good.

Bhaag Beanie Bhaag

However, Swara Bhaskar’s character was no Mrs Maisel despite her attempts to look as funny, confused, unhappy, pressured and several other adjectives as Rachel Brosnahan. If you’ve seen Mrs Maisel, you’ll know what’s going to happen in this Netflix series. In fact, even if you haven’t seen the series, you’ll still be able to predict what’s next.

The funniest characters in the show are Beanie’s parents. You’ll feel for them, you’ll laugh with them and you will applaud them. For me the biggest revelation was Varun Thakur, the guy who played Beanie’s boyfriend Arun, I think he does deserve several more roles in the near future. Very less to a flaw in his role.

Bhaag Beanie Bhaag

If you’ve seen Mrs Maisel, I’d ask you to skip it. If you haven’t, you could give this Indianized attempt a try. For me, I’d give it 2.5 stars, because well, I expected originality and humour, unfortunately, both of them remained missing.

Bhaag Beanie Bhaag