Dil Bekaraar review: Akshay Oberoi, Sahher Bambba save this otherwise bland adaptation

Dil Bekaraar, an adaptation of Anuja Chauhan’s Those Pricey Thakur Girls, is the story of Debjani Thakur (Sahher Bambba) and Dylan Singh Shekhawat (Akshay Oberoi) coming together. It is also the story of retired Supreme Court judge LN Thakur (Raj Babbar) and his loud and messy family that includes wife Mamta (Poonam Dhillon) and his alphabetically named daughters Anji (Sukhmani Sadana), Binny (Anjali Anand), Chandu, Debjani and Eshwari (Medha Shankar). Connected to all this is Dylan’s quest to write a great investigative article where he finally gets his byline.

The heavily packed ten-episode series attempts to delve into the lives and motivations of its many characters and some end up getting the short shrift. Set in the late 1980s, the web-series, directed by Habib Faisal, with Tarun Mansukhani as creative producer, evokes much nostalgia.

It was a time when the family gathered around the new commodity, the colour TV, to watch the news. In the Thakur household, it’s more of a matter of pride as Debjani aka Dabbu has been selected by the national channel Deshdarpan to be a newsreader. Her first outing is less than successful and Dylan skewers her in an anonymous column for the newspaper New India Pioneer, which becomes a sore point with Debjani.

It turns out that Dylan and Debjani’s fathers are good friends and card partners and the two can’t avoid each other's company. Slowly, they become friends and maybe even something more. But the matter of the column, and Dylan’s dogged investigation into a scandal stemming from the Bhopal gas tragedy involving minister Hardik Motla (Chandrachoor Singh), might just tear them apart.

Written by Suhani Kanwar and Ruchika Roy, the screenplay has to accommodate the many characters of the show. Estranged middle daughter Chandu, who eloped with her American boyfriend, doesn’t appear. But the rest of the Thakur girls, their husbands, and their progeny all weave in and out of episodes in Dabbu and Dylan’s periphery.

Then there is LN’s young brother AN Thakur (Pankaj Kalra), his suspicious wife Bhudevi (Padmini Kolhapure) and their meek son Gulgul (Aditya Kapadia) who are branching away to their new place but move in to the family's property while it’s being built. Dylan’s parents Sahas (Tej Sapru) and Juliet (Sonali Sachdev) also feature prominently in the Thakurs' lives.

Each episode is named after a hit song, like ‘Jawani Janeman’ and ‘Hum Kisise Kum Nahin’. The dialogues, which are in English and Hindi, feature some modern terminology like ‘anti-national’, ‘achchhe din’, ‘chronology samjho’ and ‘the nation wants to know’. Suhel Seth has a small role as Dylan’s editor Hira who thunders: A byline is not a reward. A byline is a responsibility.

Dylan chases the elusive byline for most of the series and realizes the responsibility of it when he is shown to be false in his reporting after challenging the powerful Motla. He pursues the case against the wrath of his editor because he knows the victims of the tragedy deserve justice. However, this takes up a huge chunk of the second half of the show, to the detriment of other characters.

Debjani and Dylan are the clear protagonists of this series, even as we dip in and out of the lives of the other Thakur girls and their stories. The characterization of the others is, therefore, superficial — Anji is an attention seeker, Esh is a typical high-school student, and Binny, who grew up apart from the rest of the family, is forever aggrieved about perceived differences.

Oberoi and Bambba are charming and have good chemistry as a couple. We remain invested in their love story throughout. Babbar and Dhillon, too, make the most of their parts as the senior Thakurs, while Kolhapure is a surprise as the crass, paan-eating Chachi (paternal aunt). Sapru and Sachdev as Dylan’s loving parents are delightful.

The part that doesn’t sell is the era. We are reminded again and again through props like the soft drink Gold Spot or a VCR machine (who remembers those!) or references to old ads like ‘Hamara Bajaj’ about the period it is set in. But the production design and look are just not convincing.

Furthermore, the staging of some dramatic scenes feels unintentionally funny while the comedic sequences themselves don’t have the required punch. There isn’t much bonding between the sisters either who flitter in and out, commenting on one another’s personal lives.

At about 35 minutes each, the series can be binge-watched in a day and is far removed from the awful 2013 television adaptation, Dilli Wali Thakur Gurls. Chauhan’s novel, at 700 pages, packed in a lot of detail and Dil Bekaraar seems weighed down by trying to catch a little bit of everything.

Dil Bekaraar is now available on Disney+ Hotstar.