Swara Shines In Bhaag Beanie Bhaag

Bhaag Beanie Bhaag(Netflix)

Starring Swara Bhaskar, Ravi Patel , Varun Thakur

Rating: *** ½ 

Besides being trolled by Kangana Ranaut, what is the scariest  experience  in the world? Being  up there  on stage  all alone trying to make  a roomful  of  drunk cynics laugh at  your jokes. That’s what stand-up comedians  do. That’s what Beanie Bhatnagar wants  to  do in life,much to the chagrin of her  anxious parents.

 There  is  not much of  plot to go by here. We’ve seen the convoluted lives of  struggling stand-ups in films and serials as  varied as  Funny People and, nearer  home, Four More Shots Please! Lack of originality is not a problem here. Bhaag Beanie Bhaag is  surprisingly  charming warm and  inviting.   It doesn’t take  a stab at  anything more serious than an engaging 6-episodes  in  the life a working girl who just wants to do what she wants  to, even if  it means running away  from her own  rokaceremony.

At least no one can ask our  headstrong Beanie, “Kisnne tumhe ROKA?”   Ha ha.

Infectiously  relatable , and  filmed with  a giggly gusto, this one just  carried you forward  with its zest for  life on  the   live stage. It would be no exaggeration  to say  that Swara Bhaskar  is the life and soul of the show. She  looks  radiant and  adds dollops of  sun-dipped  charm to  her part.

She has splendid  support  from  two real-life  stands-ups Varun Thakur and Ravi Patel who play the two men in her life. Patel specially is such a  natural, shooting  off his NRIno-Hindi  lines with an an unrehearsed  sparkle. Sadly his role comes to a  rather  abrupt and  inglorious end. 

The  best off-stage  moments are between Swara and Patel, the cricket break in Episode 3 ending in a kiss being the piece de resistance of this likeable show. They share an  easygoing camaraderie  which  gets heavyhanded later. The redoubtable  Girish Kulkarni  and Mona Ambegaonkar are  superbly comfortable as  Beanie’s parents , though I must say the quirky  ‘fun’ parents  of  the  heroine  are getting to be  a bit of  a cliché  in  the serials.

Incidentally   since the conversations  in the  series are in Hinglish, every time  a character  speaks  in English we get  a Hindi translation(in the  Roman script)  of  the  English language. So  ‘fuck’ is  translated as  ‘Laanat Hai’.   To that  I can only say, WTLH!