Ratan Sethi

I mainly wanted to watch this series because of some names associated with it (Bejoy Nambiar, Avinash Tiwari, Jitin Gulati). It started off a little confusing but obviously I had to give it more than one episode to decide if it was worth my time. Overall not bad but also not great. Too many unnecessary sub plots, too many characters that are hard to keep track of and what seemed like a forced gay character, Aloka (because it's cool now). I enjoyed the middle episodes of the series, the initial and last episodes not so much. The actors that I wanted to watch it for did not disappoint. Avinash Tiwari is definitely becoming a force to reckon with. Overall not memorable but also not sorry that I watched it.

Over the past few days I've been watching one episode of Modern Love Mumbai every evening and honestly I'm having trouble understanding the mostly negative reviews. I've often wondered why they're called 'reviews' and not 'opinions' since it's basically what one person thinks of a movie or a book. And some publication makes that person feel like an expert by giving them a platform to publish their opinion and turn it into a review. I've been reading the column in the NYT for many years now, having discovered it when I lived in the city and would have the newspaper delivered to me. When the series came out I was excited and subsequently disappointed. The disappointment did not however happen with the Mumbai episodes. Yes, there may be issues with cliches, predictability, length, but in my 'opinion' the stories worked. Some more than others, with I Love Thane being by far my favourite for so many reasons. Sorry for being so wordy and for not writing a 'review'. The critics may feel otherwise, but I thought that the anthology was very heartwarming and sweet. And if you keep an open mind, you might too.