“Our life is so boring, I can even predict what you would wear to say sorry to me,” Tanya, screams at her partner in a scene from the third season of Prime Video’s Permanent Roommates. For a show that hinted at the nature of things to come back in 2014 (on YouTube, no less), Permanent Roommates feels like a spoonful of honey from a cold store that helps sweet nothings age well. The conflict at the heart of this belated third season, is Tanya’s desire to move to Canada, to make that next leap in her professional journey. It’s the kind of dilemma most couples who settle into lazy attitudes and cushioned existences confront at some point in their drifting lives. Told through familiarly goofy characters, whacky antics and a whole lot of heart, Permanent Roommates, though it suffers periods of lull, still feels like a cozy, warm homecoming.
Sumeet Vyas returns to the role of the clingy but innocent Mikesh, while Nidhi Singh resumes where she left off as Tanya. The two live together, well into their journey of running their dream household. They still embody the same contrasting traits which endeared them to audiences in an era when streaming wasn’t even born. With nothing remarkable on the horizon, except Mikesh’s visiting mother, played by the spectacular Sheeba Chaddha, Tanya’s life has drifted to the cusp of existentialism. A ticket away from India presents itself as the only alternative to salvage what has begun to feel like a wasteful life. On the contrary, it’s precisely what gives her partner Mikesh, a sense of belonging and control. A long-drawn argument ensues between the two as ambition collides with comforting domesticity.
Mikesh views Tanya’s newfound desire for a new challenge as an impediment to his plans to do nothing in particular. To untangle this knotty situation, he courts bold and at times silly advice from friends and father figures. He feigns interest, mimics support before crumbling under the burden of earnestness. The five-episode season is a stroll through the hot and cold winds that blow under the shared roof Mikesh and Tanya have shared over the years. A fascinating sub-plot also sees Chaddha interact with a benevolent neighbour played by the arresting Sachin Pilgaonkar. The chemistry between the two is infectious, to the point that you’re forced to wonder if this show about two warring, but loveable partners might just make space for another. The casualness of their performances feels like an acting masterclass unfurling in the unassuming natural light of day.
Permanent Roommates is one of the most popular series to have come out of the TVF stable and though it carries the burden of nostalgia already, it makes amends by taping woke ideas to the show’s ageing world. “Main kuch galat toh nahi kar rahi, naa?” Chaddha asks Tanya, in a casually disarming moment that two women share out of mutual trust and respect as opposed to familial connections. There is also the old man who can’t perform in the bedroom or the alcoholic stud who pays for drinks with his gold chain. In this world, the silliness exists besides the tenderness, progressive ideas like live-in relationships approved by parents exist besides the societal reluctance that surviving a partner comes with. It’s the definition of bittersweet and it encroaches every inch of a series that builds through the brittleness of our fabric.
The driving force behind this unlikely hit series has always been Vyas’ ability to helm a patently intolerable character and salvage him time and again through sheer charm. Mikesh is a vulnerable man in the habit of building protective barricades around himself, and Vyas perfectly captures that fragility masked by pretentiousness. Here in the third season, he tries oddball tactics, inane methods before ultimately exposing a self that endears you to a variety of masculinity we rarely see on screen. The actor owes much to the show and to its world he returns that deeply affecting aura of soft traditionalism; as a man whose conservative outlook of the world, he is prepared to offer for an update.
Not everything in the show's breezy grammar fits. There are moments of lull, ill-conceived crossovers and a forced gimmick about an illegal immigration racket that feel, despite the tone of the show, somewhat misplaced. But these are minor roadblocks in a series that continues to tick its boxes of love, humour and cosy revelations with ease. Led by two excellent actors, there is this sweet-toothed, at times frivolous, soapy joy to watching two worldviews collide in the homely setting of a safe space. It’s adequately breezy, with enough bumps to remind you not even the cutest, custom-fit partners the world has seen can make it past without one. There really is no sweet, without the bitter.
Permanent Roommates is now streaming on Prime Video.
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