Aam Aadmi Family plays on with the typical Indian psyche & sentiments by placing a typical Indian family at the forefront with uniquely similar situations.
At a time when foreign TV shows are moving at such a fast pace and have huge twist and turns with plots and subplots, Indian web series is taking a different path altogether. They are bringing up shows that the Indian audience is already familiarized with and tuning these family dramas, slowing them down, giving them less dramatic turns and making them more realistic, so that it resonates with the newly risen Indian youth.
The Aam Aadmi Family, follows the same pattern and runs on no specific plot line. It’s a show about nothing and hence, it’s not messy. It does not even require you to use your grey cells but simply requests your presence. The show plays on with the typical Indian psyche and human sentiments by placing a typical Indian family at the forefront with uniquely similar situations. The most beautiful as well as the ugliest feature of the storyline is that is it’s not based on one certain aspect/event. There is no certain central theme, the entire show is situational. You don’t wait for the culmination of an event. It goes on.
Season One is gone and even with the new season, the viewers have no idea as to what happened to the Sharma family after the father went to Shimla. You shall see Bobby’s craziness, Sonu’s new experience with love and marriage and Dadi’s one liners. The show is a nice distracted image of the sugar-coated reality of an Indian family. One likes to believe that there are still families like this in this cynical world. The show, aptly, captures the daily life of a middle-class common man.
The pace remains constant with no big flights, and even though, this might not work for a specific class of audience, this is what exactly works for the show. You might find similarities with Disney’s movie ‘Do Dooni Chaar’. The Duggals (of Do Dooni Chaar) and Sharmas (of The Aam Admi Family) both travel by auto-rickshaw and don’t own a car. Both these families have a son with big dreams and they both even have a relatively, sensible daughter. It’s not something we haven’t seen earlier, it’s a typical depiction of any Indian family, but it’s the situations that the family members get in that make the Aam Aadmi Family worth the watch. Whether it’s a new TV or the decision to wear jeans, the show talks about everything we must have seen or gone through by ourselves.
By far, the biggest issue has been the show’s failed struggle to find any recall value. It’s almost been a year and I don’t recall anything from the first season. I even didn’t have an answer to the question, ‘what is the show’s story?’ other than that it’s about family when a person quizzed me about it. Because technically, it has no story. It’s a hard sell when you listen about it for the first time. Well, one ought to watch before judging the show.
The sentiments form the core of the show, it’s the bread and butter of the entire series. The show seems like a response to the TV show scenario in India where snakes turn into women and besides revenge family drama, there is nothing left to watch. The show is a fine example of the right intentions that can make a decent web series with some really talented actors working on a tight budget. Aam Aadmi Family is a show that shall appeal to everyone. A show about nothing may be the show that the Indian TV world might use, free from the over-dramatization and complexity of the plot that never ceases to portray even a speck of reality.