The Married Woman review: ALTBalaji, ZEE5's adaptation of Manju Kapoor's novel is lazy and unremarkable

Language: Hindi and English

“Astha was brought up properly, as befits a woman, with large supplements of fear," wrote Manju Kapoor about her titular protagonist in the opening lines of her 2003 novel A Married Woman. AltBalaji and ZEE5’s 10-episode adaptation of the eponymous novel, The Married Woman begins, on the other hand, with a curiously effective montage that shows the evolution of Astha Kapoor’s marriage.

It starts off with the newly wed sneaking out pockets of romance with her husband Hemant against the backdrop of a conservative family setup. The second Saturdays of every month are carved out for passionate sex, which as the years unfold starts resembling the indifference of a chore. In the process, Astha births two children and mothers another: her well-meaning but inattentive husband.

By the time the show opens in 1992, Astha has transformed into the epitome of the good Indian wife, one who remembers everyone else but forgets herself. The show is competent in this opening sequence, setting the scene up to articulate the systematic neglect that any Indian woman has to endure in a marriage. It becomes clear that Astha increasingly starts feeling suppressed in her marriage. But even then, it misses capturing the specificity of Kapoor’s characterisation of Astha as a woman conditioned to be fearful; as a woman who learnt to shrink herself for others early on. The lack of this detail hinders the credibility of the premise of the adaptation – a docile married woman crossing moral codes and finding love outside the realm of her marriage in another woman in the backdrop of tense Hindu-Muslim riots. In particular, it remains ill-equipped to reckon with exactly what Astha is effectively risking by giving into her impulses beyond a fractured marriage. The Married Woman, written for the screen by Jaya Misra and Surabhi Saral, never quite recovers from this misstep.

Directed by Sahir Raza, The Married Woman takes another completely modern approach to itself by letting its protagonist break the fourth wall, a narrative device visibly borrowed from Phoebe Waller Bridge’s raucous Fleabag. Throughout the first few episodes, I remained unsure of the purpose of having Astha look straight into the camera and voice out her feelings, beyond it being a seemingly clever narrative device. But after the fourth episode, it started feeling less a device and more a dishonest trick: Astha doesn’t break the fourth wall to confide in the viewer as much as she breaks it to deliver the same information that the screenplay delivers anyway. It dilutes the proceedings in the same way that a needling voiceover would have, breaking the quiet of moments and preventing a viewer from joining the dots.

Set in Delhi, the story locates the action when Astha, a college professor, meets the liberal Eijaz Khan (Imaad Shah, wasted in a thankless role), a Muslim play director while working on a Hindi adaptation of Romeo & Juliet. Sparks fly between the two, although the romance is both one-sided and doomed. Instead, it acts as the bridge that connects a resigned Astha to Eijaz’s aesthetically grieving wife Peeplika Khan (a woefully miscast Monica Dogra) with whom she charts an affair. In the book, Peeplika is primed to be the counter to Astha. In the show, she fulfills every stereotype of the classic feisty woman: she is free-minded, an alcoholic whose preferred way of mourning is with a glass of wine and a packet of cigarettes, and who dresses exclusively in Raw Mango knockoffs.

Yet biggest hurdle in charting a story about resistance and individuality in this sloppily written show remains the incompetent filmmaking: The pace of the show drags to a point where it repeats the significance of every situation thrice before resolving it. The dialogue reads more like a thesis statement (“I fall in love with the soul not with gender,” “Love is beyond individuality and conditioning”), intent on force-feeding every emotional peak. Terrible Americanised accents abound the show. And its unwavering progressive lens (“I’m pansexual,” declares Peeplika in one scene) seems to consistently forget that it should convince its viewers that it is specific to its time. Characters for instance talk in lingo more suited to 2021. On more than one occasion, Peeplika tells another character that something is not “her scene.” Another character refers to her lover with the endearment “babe.” The needlessly opulent production design reflects these shortcomings. These are small details but their wasted potential reflect in the inability of the show to engage a viewer to invest in the fate of its characters, making it lazy and unremarkable.

There is a scene that comes to my mind that best describes the redundancy of the show. “Do you give a compliment and explain it?,” asks Peeplika the first time she meets Astha alone at her art exhibition. Ten episodes later, in which the plot does not move as much as it crawls, I wished that someone had asked the makers a version of the same question: Do you make a show and explain it?

The Married Woman is streaming on ALTBalaji and ZEE5.

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