The Bollywood tadka in Call My Agent is spicy and tantalising

Nonika Singh

A spoof, a reality show or simply a web series where reel meets real—call it by whatever name, Call My Agent: Bollywood, streaming on Netflix is worth calling. Directed by Shaad Ali, an official remake of the hit French series Dix Pour Cent, it is 100 per cent Indian, ahem Bollywood.

Call My Agent: Bollywood

Cast: Aahana Kumra, Soni Razdan, Ayush Mehra, Rajat Kapoor and Radhika Seth

Director: Shaad Ali

Rating: ***

While the disclaimer might read, it’s a work of fiction, one can see the reality of tinsel town streaming in dollops. The Bollywood tadka is spicy and tantalising, making it an amusing ride. With an ensemble cast, apart from the four main talent agents, a large majority of whom, from Lara Dutta to Dia Mirza to Ali Fazal to Jackie Shroff, play their real selves, there is delightful ring to the story of this agency that manages stars.

Like the stars they manage, their own lives are messy too. Of course, though the agency is run by a motley group of four we are more privy to the lives of Monty (Rajat Kapoor) and Amal (Aahana Kumra). Soni Razdan’s character is totally underplayed. If Rajat Kapoor trying to hold the floundering agency together is a picture of subdued mannerisms, Aahana Kumra is all out there literally. Truly uninhibited, serenading more than one woman, she plays an ‘out of closet’ lesbian who wears her sexuality on her sleeve. Some of her love scenes could make you see red.

Is Shaad treading on unsafe ground here? Perhaps or perhaps, he knows exactly what he is doing. For in one of the later episodes Nandita Das, cast as herself, takes a dig at her own film Fire, which too dealt with same-sex relationship.

Tongue-in-cheek she remarks, “Lots of fire,” as she watches Aahana lock lips with another woman. And you know Shaad is being deliberately provocative and that too more than once. So, here comes the dialogue, “Art in our film industry has been long dead, now Art the agency will also be dead.” Yes, indeed, the agency of these not too scrupulous agents is called Art.

Is that too a cocky subversion… for the one thing arty about the agency seems to be their craftiness which they put to full use in not only ensnaring their star clients but also to keep feeding their egos. Egos, in Bollywood, we all know are massive. But as in politics, in stardom also there are no permanent friends or foes. So, it’s not just Lillete Dubey and Ila Arun who patch up, but so do bickering real life mother-daughter Sarika and Akshara as well as flames Ali Fazal and Richa Chadha.

Much of these real stars’ fights are fictionalised and flight of imagination, but much here is real, with stings intact. Interestingly, Shaad has managed to have them lower their guard and also take a jibe at themselves.

The cherubic Farah Khan elicits a smile, the moment she walks into the series and even says it aloud, “This is a commercial film, sab upar upar se hai, I don’t want layers.” Shaad, however, packs in layers, some totally obvious and other concealed within yet revealing. There is a North-Eastern angle too with an aspiring actress from the region trying to find her feet in the industry.

Faithful to the original, Shaad and writers Abbas and Hussain Dalal swivel from one end to another and take us from one brand of cinema to another. So, there are arty directors like Tigmanshu Dhulia and Nandita Das. If Dhulia’s film featuring senior actors is called Paidaishi Killers, in Nandita’s story dog is the real soul so why should Jackie Shroff play the “underdog” (pun intended).

Puns, in fact, abound in the series and often ring and sting. What is missing in the six-part series is, as Aahana playing Amal informs, “It’s only interval time.” You bet the second season is very much due. And we are waiting not only to know which way her aborted love story with Jasleen (Anuschka Sawhney looks a sexy siren) turns but which other stars (hopefully a few superstars too) and their spoofy ways the series can rope in, in the second outing.