Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives Review: Glamour, Glitz, and Unreal Issues!

Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives is a Netflix reality TV series with eight episodes and revolves around the personal and professional lives of Neelam Kothari, Maheep Kapoor, Bhavna Pandey and Seema Khan, wives of Bollywood actors Samir Soni, Sanjay Kapoor, Chunky Pandey, and Sohail Khan respectively.

Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives Review

If you ever wanted an Indian version of KUWTK, this is it! Though, without the entire growth part the characters here are already established in their own ways. The show is problematic in so many ways. KUWTK was from 2007 onwards, and at least had something in it other than utter rich white trash. There was family, growth, controversy, scandal, and everything but Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives is pure masala trash!

The show tries to say how difficult the lives of these star wives are, with 5-star travel and accommodations and how these Bollywood wives conquer all of these (first world) unrealistic problems! The show shamelessly fakes and scripts each and every moment and you see it clearly – be it a French model turned waiter, a fake stalker, empty restaurants, and more. All this when this show says it’s giving you an inside, raw and real look but it’s all superficial. This make-believe staged reality is annoying!

There are a lot of cameos here and why not? After all, it’s a Dharmatic Production. While the show is funny (rarely), their struggles are just like Ananya Pandey’s Filmfare struggles. The accents are fake, the struggles are unreal, they all look almost the same and their friendship is not-so-valuable as they undermine it themselves every now and then! These “best friends” and wives are blinded by their privileges. As Maheep organizes for them to go on a beach cleanup drive, Seema Khan says “I found a lot of milk packets at the beach. I think people should just go dairy-free.“ Wow, sure, why not? While this is just one of the instances, there are various other examples.

And then again, there’s Karan Johar who, time and again, makes this a set of his show Koffee with Karan and starts an argument. It’s not drama but cringe material. If you laugh at South Delhi/Mumbai’s Coco bhaiyaa, then this entire series is that. Maheep Kapoor doesn’t leave a chance to belittle her own “best friends” and constantly calls them by various not-so-nice names. It’s sad, annoying and disrespectful. Also, she has two sets of binoculars to stalk her neighbours and somehow, everyone is casually joking about it. It’s rude, offensive and shameful.

On the other hand, throughout the series, Neelam Kothari keeps on asking if she should return to films or not. And if you see this closely, she is seeding the idea of a comeback in both audiences’ and the makers’ minds. Smart move, but the level of confident self-doubt here is displeasing. And then there’s Seema Khan who manages to get on your nerves with her baby tantrums everywhere and loves seeking attention!

The only person who makes a bit of sense in her fights and reasonings is Bhavana Panday here! She is saner than anyone in the entire lot. But then she harnesses such beliefs – tightening her skin by harnessing ‘energies of the earth’ and not travelling in the same aircraft as her husband in case it crashes and their kids are left orphaned. Ugh!

Also Read: Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives Season 2 Review: It’s Bad But You Can’t Stop Cringe-Watching It!

In Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives, there is a display of wealth and classism and the ladies are oblivious of their privilege. Their views on nepotism in the film industry, too, makes this one sad viewing experience. If you wanna see Malaika Arora in her gym, Raveena Tandon cooking, Jacqueline Fernandez giving Instagram tips, K’Jo being ridiculous, Bollywood wives going overboard, and senseless, surface-level portrayal of things, then this show does give you that.

Summing up, Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives ends with the “best friends” stuck at home and on a video call while they talk about how this lockdown sucks and their wine is finished, nails chipped off, evening walks missing, air conditioning not working, and how life is terrible.

They forget to mention the fact that people are dying, the economy is crashing down, jobs are lost and necessities of people are not fulfilled. For these rich and famous, the unavailability of wine is more important than the unavailability of basic needs. It’s a very tone-deaf show to release at such a difficult and unstable time. Do your privileges make you blind and money make you shallow? Well, in this case, yes!

Stream It or Skip It

“You can love the fabulous wives, troll them, but you sure as hell cannot ignore them.”– Karan Johar

SKIP IT! Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives is filled with superficial conversation with no substance at all. They all live in their ivory towers of reality and don’t even bother looking out in the real world and live the big idea of unrealistic suffering. They are all just brats with fake accents. The only truth bombs here surprisingly are by Ekta Kapoor and Arjun Kapoor. The rest is all… Bollywood. Nobody is relevant here. Just no!

Also, Is it just me, or is it lowkey offensive that these women don’t have their identities built on as individuals but as Bollywood “wives”?

Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives is now streaming on Netflix.

Also Read: Fabulous Lives vs Bollywood Wives Review: Cringe Fest of Wealth and Unwanted Drama