Netflix gets honest, cringy series about Indians

Indian Matchmaking brings you the adventures of marriage broker 'Sima aunty' and her hard-to-please clients

Indian Matchmaking, shot in the US and India, follows what happens in the lives of matchmaker Sima Taparia and her affluent clientele.

Netflix has been on a roll with reality TV. It has cracked the formula of making binge-worthy content with ‘Love is Blind’ and ‘Too Hot To Handle’.

Its first foray into the genre in India was an utter flop — ‘What the Love!’ — but it has found the right mix of cringe, absurdity and truth with its latest offering, 'Indian Matchmaking'.

The series has taken the Internet by storm. Released on July 16, it follows matchmaker Sima Taparia, who sees herself as an executor of God’s will on Earth (since marriages are made in heaven).

"Sima aunty", as she refers to herself, flies to wherever her seemingly exclusively upper-caste clients are and assures them she will find them suitable alliances from her database.

Five minutes into the show, I had to pause to google whether this is a mockumentary; it is not. The clients, their parents and Sima give us a no-holds-barred look into the matchmaking scene. This is an unvarnished, warts-and-all series.

Peppered with remarks about skin colour, height, caste, salaries, horoscopes and more, the series does not sugar-coat anything. Sima aunty’s favourite dialogue is telling — "marriage is an adjustment and a compromise". Many might argue this amounts to a promotion of these ideals, but they actually show how a majority think.

This, combined with a painful lack of cast self-awareness, the show is a cringe-fest; one from which I could not take my eyes off. At one point, Houston-based client and lawyer Aparna, who has travelled to 40 countries, says that the fact that she has not made it to 41 is “literal daily struggle”.

While the show explores the journeys of eight individuals, we only see only one match come to fruition: that of Akshay, who okays a girl only to keep his mother’s hypertension under control.

Spoiler alert: it does not work out. If you see the show, you will know why. When the girl, Radhika, tells him she wants to work, he immediately asks who will take care of the kids. This mama’s boy, a Freudian dream, says he wants someone exactly like his mother who will do everything she does at home.

Meanwhile, there are two women who reject the matchmaker route and go their own way. One has decided she is comfortable on her own and another meets a potential husband on Bumble. It is interesting to see this being accepted in a show meant to focus on the traditional route.

Each story is fascinating, and so is the guest appearance by the more ‘modern’ matchmaker, who turns out to be anything but. If you were to measure the success of the show with its intended effect — giving the concept of arranged marriage a facelift — it is an utter failure. But you see it as an exposé of the toxic behind-the-scenes machinations of the big fat Indian wedding, and it is a perfect rollercoaster.