Made in Heaven: salacious TV series spotlights sex, status and scheming in modern Delhi

There’s a lot of Indian-themed content on the streamers. Much of it aimed at a crossover audience is about weddings and marriages, or the journey to get there. There’s Indian Matchmaking, The Big Day, Wedding Season. You could be forgiven for thinking not much else happens in Indian lives, that they end at the point of marriage. So, from the outset, the Indian television drama series Made in Heaven, written and directed by prominent film-maker Zoya Akhtar, appears to slot straight into the genre. But, in fact, what it does is subvert it. The second series of Made in Heaven was released in August, after a long wait for audiences who lapped up the first series’ heady mix of salaciousness and glamour. The show is set in a wedding planning company catering to the well-heeled of Delhi and beyond: from minor royalty to the newly rich, who are flush with cash and brash confidence. There are actors, politicians, glamorous brides, fabulous locations, weddings dripping with colour and vibrancy, but below the surface the show delves into deeper societal problems plaguing India and the wider Indian diaspora. Series one takes in class issues, social mobility, gender dynamics, family tensions and being gay in India. At its heart, Made in Heaven is really a look at the corrosive, cloying corruption of money and status in modern Delhi. The front room of the agency offers the shiny future promise of the perfect day, a couple matched that is literally, to take on a popular Indian saying, made in heaven – that is, predetermined and approved by the gods. The backrooms show the dirty underbelly of what people do to move upwards in contemporary India: the compromises, the chicanery, the Faustian deals. Made in Heaven’s protagonists are Tara (Sobhita Dhulipala) and her business partner Karan (Arjun Mathur), both Delhiites who move comfortably through the city’s wealthy suburbs, from jazz bars to slick offices, dinner parties at sprawling compounds to the drawing rooms of clients. Tara is a haughtily icy beauty queen married to Adil (Jim Sarbh), the scion of a wealthy business family, the kind of industrialist clan that forms the alternative to modern-day royalty in India. Tara’s marriage seems slippery in unidentifiable ways and, from the start, she appears uncertain about what the reality of it is. Karan, meanwhile, is carrying the burden of enormous debts racked up in a previous failed business venture, while valiantly wearing the shame that comes with being an out gay man in a disapproving social climate. Series one was made in 2018, months before Indian courts overturned a ban on homosexuality. Petitions calling for same-sex marriage have this year been heard in the Indian supreme court. To Tara, marriage is transactional, a way of bettering one’s financial position and social standing – and worth doing almost anything to attain. To Karan, however, marriage is an afterthought and sex is the main aim. We see him in graphic trysts with other men at a time when homosexuality is illegal. Meanwhile, Tara and Karan’s clients tell stories of different segments of India, from the American Indian family that returns to Punjab to find a bride for their son in an unusual way, to Rajasthani royalty’s continued hold on their subjects, to demanding and spoilt brides. Series two takes its episodic examination of social issues further, this time tackling polygamy, digital abuse, colourism, casteism, transphobia and, in an episode starring Australian Indian actor Shibani Dandekar, gay marriage and parental disapproval. There are other new characters, such as Meher Chaudhry (Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju), a transwoman who comes to work for the agency; and Bollywood star Dia Mirza, who plays the humiliated first wife of a man who takes a second, much younger spouse. By the second series, Vijay Raaz (of Monsoon Wedding fame – which probably kickstarted the Indian screen wedding trope) is a regular character, playing a small-time money shark. As with series one, the visual game is titanium-level strong: the sets are intricate and multilayered, the staging magnificent and the fashion next-level. I don’t want to give too much away, but when Dandekar’s character arrives at her ceremony on horseback, dressed as a warrior princess in a sweeping gown by the most fantastical of Indian designers, Gaurav Gupta, there was a collective gasp in my living room. Streaming services have been investing heavily in India of late, hoping to tap into the country’s enormous middle class. By giving a free hand to film-makers, they are important outlets for India, where an image-conscious government has created obstacles for the screen industry domestically. Despite its occasional heavy-handed preachiness, Made in Heaven remains an extraordinary show for the light it sheds on the complexities of the most important and pivotal choice in life, that of a partner, and for doing this through a deeply progressive lens. Watch it for a look at modern India that pulls no punches, yet is as sumptuously staged as any of the other Indian wedding porn on air. • Made in Heaven is streaming on Amazon Prime in Australia. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here • Aarti Betigeri is the editor of Growing Up Indian in Australia, out in July 2024 through Black Inc.