Maya Memsaab

Good Bad Girl | Showrunners: Vikas Bahl and Chaitally Parmar | Cast: Samridhi Dewan, Vaibhav Raj Gupta, Gul Panag | Language: Hindi | SonyLIV

Maya Ahuja is not a bad girl, she’s just in a hurry to get ahead. She sees more good in lying through her teeth, whether it is faking an illness to gain sympathy, or pretending that she was assaulted by a woman she detests. A Becky Sharp character who reinvented herself to fit into her new life, she will do anything — sell phone sex and slide out of commitments — if it makes sense to her. She learnt early in life that lying is a profitable side venture. Told in three stages — Maya as a resentful eight-year-old, Maya as an 18-year-old learning that it is best to fake it till you make it, and Maya in the present day as a lawyer who wants the corner office — Good Bad Girl is both social satire and family drama. Fortunately they don’t give Maya too much of a conscience, so there is no redemption. She’s a psychopath and revels in being one.

Why watch it: For a career-making performance from Samridhi Dewan

Mismatched, Season 2 | Director: Akarsh Khurana | Cast: Prajakta Koli, Rohit Saraf | Language: Hindi | Netflix

When Mismatched came out in 2020, based on Sandhya Menon’s 2017 novel When Dimple Met Rishi, it made waves for its carefree depiction of young people in small

town India as opposed to the imagined youth of Bollywood films who have idyllic summer camps and casually sport luxury brands. Mismatched made it cool to be a video gamer and to be a creator of apps. For the majority of students of the Aravali Institute of Technology, getting rich by coding is still the dream. We return to Dimple, who’s even more determined to be the next Nandini Nahata (startup queen played by Dipannita Sharma), and Rishi, the Rajput boy with a problem father, who is a gifted animator. Both are with different partners this time, and season two sees misun­derstandings. It’s fortunate actors Vihaan Samat and Musk­kaan Jaferi have tremendous screen presence and that Rannvijay Singha makes a cute professor type. Campus life, with its hookups and hangups, friendships and rivalries, drinkathons and hackathons, is portrayed well, with just enough of Rajasthan to keep us engaged.

Why watch it: For the ensemble cast of actors led by breakout stars

In Case You Missed It

Luckiest Girl Alive | Director: Mike Barker | Cast: Mila Kunis, Finn Wittrock | Language: English | Netflix

She left Trashy TifAni behind in the school where she lost her self respect. She changed her accent, her diet, her clothes. She’s what Gone Girl would’ve been if she’d stayed in New York. She’s on the cusp of getting everything she worked for — the marriage to the trust fund baby and a move to The New York Times. New York has never looked lovelier, Kunis is on form, and the American super rich have never been more self indulgent. This is the life she wanted, until she didn’t.

Why watch it: Jessica Knoll’s Gone Girl-ish novel comes alive here

About The Author

Kaveree Bamzai

Kaveree Bamzai is an author and a contributing writer with Open

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