Masterpeace: Nothing Exceptional About It

This One's No Masterpiece

Masterpeace, the new series starring Nithya Menen and Sharaf U Dheen, starts promisingly but becomes grating after a point. Neelima Menon reviews.

WOKE narratives can be a dodgy proposition, especially when interlaced with humour. In Masterpeace (Disney+ Hotstar), the Malayalam web series directed by Sreejith N, it is the deliberate interplay of wokeness that turns out to be its biggest undoing. It’s structured as a flashy rom-com, filled with loud, melodramatic characters who seem strangely conscious of their artificial setting. (In hindsight, not unlike Bro Daddy, which was also written by this director.) There is Binoy (Sharaf U Dheen), an entrepreneur who is trying to market lingerie, and his wife Riya (Nithya Menen), who intends to start a dating app.

They live in a fancy apartment splashed with every colour in the rainbow, which includes a canary yellow fridge and several other knick-knacks. There is a Mona Lisa replica that occupies pride of place in their living room, and is apparently the “masterpiece” that inadvertently leads to a few conflicts in the house. What begins as a petty squabble between the couple soon escalates into a full-fledged family drama when their respective parents enter the scene.

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RUDE AWAKENING

Nithya Menen & Sharaf U Dheen Deserved Better Than Masterpeace

By Neelima Menon

Masterpeace has one of those storylines that try hard to be lurid and funny, though the latter seldom lands well. One wonders at the wisdom of plying each episode with a voice-over that ends up being an overstatement.

All the characters seem to have been written with a certain “melodrama meter” in mind. There are Binoy’s parents — Aniyamma (Mala Parvathy) and Chandichan (Renji Panicker), and the yin and the yang are balanced here. Homemaker Aniyamma is conservative, sexist and imprudent, while ex-military Chandichan is submissive and daydreams of controlling her. Aniyamma is that stereotypical unpleasant mother-in-law who can only find fault with her daughter-in-law. A sort of shout-out to the ‘90s Malayalam cinema moms-in-law played by Philomena and Meena with aplomb. You can find the same balance in Riya’s parents as well. If Kuriyachan (Asokan) is a conservative, religious bigot, who thinks a woman’s place after marriage should be under her husband’s feet, Lisamma (Shanti Krishna) has been told to stifle her dreams to take care of her family. And understandably, together they create mayhem in the couple’s life.

Binoy’s sketch is a bit uneven. He looks out-of-sorts for the most part, be it in front of his Ria or his parents. His relationship with Riya is also carelessly written. In the end, we come out as confused about Binoy as he is about himself. Ria is played out to be the oddity in the group, the harbinger of change. The one who perceives the world through a woke, feminist lens. In a family governed by a misogynist father, oppressed mother, oppressive mother-in-law, quiet father-in-law and spouse, Ria brings in the drama. A lot of issues are voiced through her. She talks about equality, patriarchy, caste oppression, religious bigotry, women’s lib at every turn and yet, not a single one of her messages lands well. The writing is so superficial that it drums up as an instruction manual on women’s liberation/wokeism. To begin with, you are already aware of the details and then the artificial staging gives it away. Take for instance Ria’s altercation with her father on learning Kathak: despite the humourous spells, it ends up pretty lame. Or the ruckus when he discovers that his son-in-law stores temple kheer in the fridge. The aimed humour over the Mona Lisa painting nosedives. There are times when Ria’s dramatic showdowns end up grating on your nerves rather than adding humour as intended.

Mala Parvathy hams it up, perhaps as was the brief, but then after a point, her rants seem far too many and far less impactful. Renji Panicker, who has rarely made an impression as an actor, faithfully lives up to that image. One isn’t sure if he looks embarrassed or is going through some physical ailment. Asokan is pitch-perfect as Kuriyachan — one has to especially mention the scene featuring him and Shanti Krishna. As she grieves about their marriage in which she had no say, Kuriyachan shuttles between denial, annoyance and awkwardness, and both actors play that up nicely.

After Nithya comes on screen, one spends a few needless minutes wondering why she was spotted in that winged eye makeup in that setting. Nithya is an actor who can charm your socks off, but here the writing often lets her down. Though not her best, she still manages to hold our attention. Again, Sharaf U Dheen has the same quality as his co-star, but one felt he genuinely looked bewildered on screen. As if he didn’t quite understand the brief: should I stick to comedy or be serious or show a confused face for the most part? The duo lacks chemistry as well.

Then, Masterpeace messes up further with a few of its supporting characters. The episode featuring their friend Adarsh (Anand Manmadhan) who gets caught by his wife was agonising, to put it mildly, including projecting the wife as a loud, obnoxious busybody. Thereby deliberately and crudely creating sympathy for the philandering husband. The random Aparna who whisks away after doling out unsolicited advice to the couple was another baloney. Masterpeace starts promisingly but gets tiresome after a point. Time-pass, maybe.

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