Showtime Part 2 Review | Bollywood’s Shallow Self-Reproach Feels More Like a Glorified Daily Soap

In my review of part 1 of season 1 of the new Dharmatic series for Hotstar, Showtime, I mentioned that even in self-criticism, Bollywood lacks nuances. Part 2 has now been released, and there are only three episodes. Well, the story goes through a predictable set of dramatic shifts in equations, and what you eventually get is a glorified daily soap disguised as a potent series.

The project 1857 starring Armaan Kapoor is on hold due to the personal problems Armaan was going through, and Raghu is trying his best to make things difficult for Mahika. How this battle for the upper hand in the industry unfolds and what dramatic steps both characters had to take in order to sustain is what we get to see in Part 2 of Showtime.

The basic problem is the kind of melodrama they are trying to bring into this self-critiquing piece. Everything we hear about the film industry and its functioning is exhibited in the series but in a very on-your-face way. The fact that someone like Karan Johar is backing this venture makes me wonder whether Bollywood is admitting that they are just a group of impulsive, self-obsessed, shallow people. Even the characters in the series, who are considered good ones, like Mahika, who gets this validation from Satya that she sort of believed in his vision, ultimately come out as this silly, clueless girl.

Intentional or not, Mahima Makwana has that cluelessness in her performance, which is actually the state of her character in the series. But whenever she puts on that attitude of being someone who knows the game, it just doesn’t have that swagger. Emraan Hashmi is there as the impatient Raghu Khanna, who is constantly in a juggling mode, switching from one camp to another. Vijay Raaz, as Saajan Morarka, gets to be the bad guy, and his tactics and the scenes where he reveals his intentions have no subtlety. Mouni Roy as Yasmin Ali gets some significant space in the second part, while names like Rajeev Khandelwal, Shriya Saran, and Vishal Vashishtha get less space.

Created by Sumit Roy and directed by Mihir Desai and Archit Kumar, Showtime is one series that constantly remains in the peripherals of what the public already knows. It claims to give you an insider perspective of what is happening in the world of glamor, and the writing is so shallow that you don’t even feel like rooting for any of those characters. The characters like Yasmin, Prithvi, Sathya, etc., are having different kinds of struggles, and the writers can’t even make the audience empathize with those characters whose battles have a sense of relatability since some of them have that common man backdrop.

Showtime ends with a possible second season in the offering, and looking at the way there is constant drama outside cinema in Bollywood, it won’t be tough for the writers to get elements to continue the story. With superficial characters and shallow writing with posh frames, Showtime feels like a lame and tasteless self-reproach from Bollywood.