Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives’ on Netflix Lacks Any Fabulosity

The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives is about four women who have been friends for over 20 years, and all of them are married to Bollywood actors. They are all beautiful and wealthy. They are devoted mothers with lovely families. But are their lives really fabulous enough for us to invest our time in for a whole season? That’s the million-dollar question.

THE FABULOUS LIVES OF BOLLYWOOD WIVES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The show sets up the “who’s who” of the series without any hesitation, and in the very first moments of the pilot, we meet Seema, Bhavana, Maheep, and Neelam, the four women of the cast who are all married to Bollywood stars and/or have children or other family members who are well known in the Indian entertainment industry. The voiceover describing each woman’s family and their relationships to one another is a mile a minute on purpose but a bit hard to follow, given their enormous family trees. If you walk away remembering anything from it, it’s that they’re all jewelry or fashion designers who love wine and friendship.

The Gist: Maheep Kapoor is, at least in the pilot, the woman around whom the rest of the show’s stars revolve. Married to Bollywood actor Sanjay Kapoor, Maheep’s daughter Shanaya is headed to Paris with her parents to attend le Bal, a debutante coming-out affair. Shanaya is one of about two dozen young women invited to attend this exclusive event which is for the “cream of the cream,” as they describe it, of women from around the world. That explains why I, someone who is still unshowered at 4 p.m., has never heard of it.

While Maheep and Sanjay sit at a Paris café discussing Louis Vuitton and eat escargot, Neelam Kothari is back in Mumbai reading lines for a script that was sent to her which is full of swears. Neelam was an actress in her younger days but quit and refuses to swear, kiss other men or do anything that could be perceived as improper, on camera. Honestly, of all the people on this series or any reality series, her prudishness at least makes her uniquely interesting.

Next is Seema, who can’t stop DMing Kim Kardashian. A fashion designer and Kardashian-lover, Seema is also interesting in that she has two sons and is still married to her husband, actor Sohail Khan, but she doesn’t live with him and likes it that way. Bhavana, married to actor Chunky Pandey, has two daughters, one of whom is rising star herself, Ananya.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Bollywood Wives is reminiscent of many, many other formulaic shows about groups of women, from the Real Housewives franchise to Hollywood Exes. Hollywood Exes, a show starring Eddie Murphy’s ex-wife Nicole and her famous friends, only lasted three short seasons on VH1, due mainly to the fact that the women, like the women on Bollywood Wives, were real-life friends who courted little drama. Arguments felt manufactured and low stakes as a result, and, as sad as this sounds, no one wants to watch a reality show about a bunch of lifelong friends who respect each other too much to let petty arguments get out of hand.

Our Take: At one point during the pilot of The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives, Seema discusses the Keeping Up With The Kardashians finale with her son, who calls her a wannabe Kim Kardashian. Seema explains how she regularly sends Kim, whom she doesn’t actually know, photos of clothes from her fast fashion line, or to just wish her a happy birthday. It’s moment that tells you all you need to know about the show and feels like it would have been best left on the cutting room floor, just the fact that this brand new reality show, which is no doubt inspired by the success of shows like KUWTK, has to mine another reality show, the one against which all others are measured, for a topic of conversation is either super meta, or a reason it may be too mundane to care about.

And mundane it is. Yes, these women and their families all have money, nice homes, and famous friends, but what are we watching them do? Hang out on each others’ couches, discuss their kids’ blossoming careers, FaceTime with their families… Aren’t we all doing that? Where is the escape? Are their lives fabulous? Probably! To them! But it’s not terribly exciting, and definitely not a thing I need to watch for eight episodes.

Sex and Skin: Nope.

Parting Shot: Will Sanjay Kapoor’s poor waltzing skills be the laughing stock of le Bal? Those are the highest stakes of episode one, which is titled “Of Waltzes and Water Bras.” The waltz is one of the two biggest moments in the episode. Sanjay’s inability to count in 3/4 time is the cliffhanger we’re left with and, spoiler alert, in episode two when he actually has to waltz, he does fine.

Sleeper Star: To be perfectly honest, no one comes off as being terribly interesting in the pilot, and the “Coming Up” previews for the season are so bland that there’s no one to offer comic relief or high drama.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Each one of us has a very distinct, strong personality. You know, Bhavana’s the spiritual one. Seema’s the loudmouth. The confused one. Maheep is the one who just says it as it is. I’m the one who’s more guarded,” Neelam Kothari says at the top of the show. This should be a log line in the show’s description, not necessarily actual dialogue to set the characters up to try to pigeonhole each woman into a specific archetype.

Our Call: SKIP IT! Sure, it’s always fun to peek into the real homes of rich people, but aside from actor Chunky Pandey telling his wife Bhavana he thinks someone is stealing his Japanese whiskey (so as a result, he sets up hidden cameras throughout the house), we don’t even get a great look at these fabulous lives in any new and interesting ways, whether through their culture or just simply their personalities. The women travel with a million suitcases, discuss bras and plastic surgery, and drink together. For those of us who have exhausted our western reality TV shows and hoped for something new here, there is too little Indian culture represented to make it interesting, and the women’s personalities aren’t enough of a draw. The result is an all-too-familiar rehash of a tired formula.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Brooklyn. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.

Watch The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives on Netflix