Netflix’s new series Bombay Begums marks the return of Pooja Bhatt to our screens in this empowering female set piece. This six-part show focuses in on what it means to be a woman living in modern Bombay, and sees the actress making her lead comeback as a powerful CEO, after over a decade of not taking on any projects.
The series begins with a really promising start. We are rapidly introduced to our five female focuses: Rani (Pooja Bhatt) is the headstrong CEO of the Royal Bank of Bombay who will not let anything prevent her from her goals, Fatima (Shahana Goswami) is a woman caught between the progression of her career and her family life, Lily (Amruta Subhash) is a prostitute turned businesswoman who just wants the best for her son, Ayesha (Plabita Borthakur) is a young woman with huge ambitions for her career caught between a web of romantic dalliances and Shai (Aadhya Anand) who is a young teenage girl falling in love for the first time. All of the women in the story interlink and help to enable each other, but also to tear each other apart. It’s clear that Bombay Begums is attempting to portray the female experience at different ages and from different angles with this array of characters.
The central performances really define the show. Whilst Bhatt takes centre stage as Rani and functions as the epicentre that all the other female leads bounce off of, Subhash, Borthakur and Goswami embrace the strengths and the flaws of their characters to deliver well-rounded imaginations of fictional women that recognise the issues faced by women in the modern day. This is the first breakout performance for the young Anand who does well to hold her own amongst the more intense stories of the older actresses.
However, as the teenager Shai, her story is unfortunately quickly pushed to the side in favour of the other characters. From the beginning, her innocent story of teenage love feels out of place amongst the myriad of affairs, business dilemmas and marital issues. Her story continues with the overused voiceover that chimes in unnecessarily throughout the narrative and perhaps the series would’ve functioned more fluidly without the addition of her story. Even when her narrative takes a dramatic turn, it feels incredibly out of place for her character. It becomes apparent that the writers struggled to place her amongst the other women in the series and forced a situation that feels false.
The issues with the character portrayal, unfortunately, do not end here. In a show that has promoted itself as a vision of female empowerment and which has been released on International Women’s Day, it’s almost alarming how the women rapidly became fixated on the men in their life. Whilst, in the beginning, we see a focus upon issues between work and family life, and the responsibilities placed upon women in the modern day, the narrative quickly devolves into a marital drama and the women seek their empowerment through the aid of the men in their life.
These problems seem to begin as the series takes a focus upon creating tension and shock rather than developing the issues it sets up within its first episode. By the middle of the series, it’s almost hard to remember where we began and there are several loose ends left fragmented by the series’ end.
The series excels, however, when it takes moments to honour the female characters as they are. All the interactions between Rani and Fatima, as the two highest ranked female employees of the bank, see a powerful exchange of bribes and business acumen between two intelligent and controlled women and scenes like this are where Bombay Begums shines. The use of Mumbai almost as a character throughout the show also helps to enhance the experience of the audience and make the narrative and themes come to life. Between wide angle shots of the lively culture of the city, to the detailed depictions of the high life demonstrates all aspects of life in the city and further extends the idea of these women as products of their time and their location.
Bombay Begums is almost difficult to pinpoint. Its strengths depict the struggle of women, not only in Mumbai but across the globe, who are struggling to find their place and happiness in the modern landscape. It then proceeds to undercut itself by prioritising the effects of men on the women’s lives and creating over-dramatic narrative points before it has fully developed its fascinating insight into women in business. Overall, however, the show is worth the rollercoaster of random narratives for the central performances. Each of the lead actresses truly make their characters believable and it is their depiction of the modern woman that makes the show shine.
Bombay Begums is available now on Netflix.
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