Preferring not to read the original books that are adapted to into movies or TV shows we went into the BBC/Netflix treatment of Vikram Seth’s bestseller A Suitable Boy totally cold. We knew that the story, that award-winning Welsh writer Andrew Davies developed into a six part series ,was about an Indian mother trying to arrange a marriage for her daughter Lata, but there were plot twists that caught us totally by surprise.
A Suitable Boy is set in 1951 when newly independent India was undergoing great change but at the same time was still steeped in traditions such as arranged marriages. It focuses on two large extended families and the connections between them which make up the very large cast. In fact one of the disappointing facts in this otherwise excellent drama is that there is not enough time to fully develop some of the more interesting minor characters.
Most of them are upper middle-class that have comfortable lives abetted by a whole team of domestic servants. It’s a picture book India full of rich colors and glorious clothes that have never been washed in the dirty water of the Ganges. And naturally everybody is son extremely good-looking that you assume that it would be very easy to for any of them to find a suitor.
One of the main characters is Maan Kapoor, the extremely handsome young son of a famous politician. Maan is not looking for marriage ans instead falls for Saeeda Bal a ‘courtesan’ whose very comfortable life has been paid for by her gentleman callers. She however treats Maan as a real lover, and even though she is considerably older, they make a very happy couple.
However as passionate as Maan is about Saeeda, he throws us all into confusion by the fact that every time he meets his best friend Firoz, the pair of them sizzle so much you expect them to immediately rip each other’s clothes off. We think maybe our gaydar has for once let us down.
So we decide to back track to the book to see if we are imagining things, and we read that Davies has revealed their chemistry was no accident. He explained “ I think if you read the book again, it’s [their relationship] very subtly indicated. ‘I think Maan and Firoz have a delightful romantic friendship which at times has become physical, I think they’re both on that great scale of which we’re all on from all out gay to all out hetero.”
Thank God , we thought we had imagined it. Plus the fact that Ishaan Khattar the actor playing Maan is allegedly gay himself, puts an added element to the electricity between the two men on the screen.
So we’d like to suggest that if the Producers are considering making a second series then may they could adapt it into A Suitable Boy for Another Suitable Boy.
N.B. A Suitable Boy is currently being screened on https://acorn.tv/ (which can be accessed via Amazon Prime)
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Labels: 2021, A Suitable Boy, TV series
