‘Showtime’ series review: Emraan Hashmi is good fun in showbiz satire

Emraan Hashmi in ‘Showtime’

For reasons unknown, Dharmatic Entertainment isn’t done playing The Fame Game (2022, Netflix). Their latest offering, Showtime, on Disney+ Hotstar, is another sly-eyed series about the inner workings of Bollywood. It trades the mystery-thriller trappings of The Fame Game for unadulterated tabloid pulp, full of scurrilous ‘insider-outsider’ talk and in-house cameos (Janhvi Kapoor and Manish Malhotra show up, but hey, so does Rajeev Masand). Frequently silly, soapy and salacious, this show — fronted by Emraan Hashmi and Mahima Makwana — is a fairly brisk and modest affair, unambitious TV that can furnish a few hours of gossipy good fun.

Raghu Khanna (Hashmi) runs Viktory Studios, founded by and named for his ailing father, Victor (Naseeruddin Shah). Their newest opus, ambitiously titled ‘Imaan-e-Ishq’, has crashed and burned at the box-office, an upset Raghu hopes to reverse with another project: a snazzy travesty called ‘Pyaar Dangerous’.

To secure favorable reviews for the film, he tries bribing critics, including Mahika (Mahima Makwana), a young shoo-in at a news channel. Tetchy and idealistic, Mahika turns down the offer (sigh), and, in a stunning display of professional hara-kiri, calls out Raghu on national TV.

Here comes the twist. Mahika, it is soon revealed, is the granddaughter of Victor from an earlier marriage. Before succumbing to his illness at the end of the first episode, he bequeaths her control of his waning studio, leaving Raghu to fret and fume. The slighted scion walks out to start his own studio, and so to war. It’s a ludicrous premise — Jubilee minus the costume drama accouterments and good taste — but it makes for compellingly campy satire. Rajeev Khandelwal frisks around in sequined overshirts like a vainer, more successful version of Rajeev Khandelwal. Entrenched industry traditions are spoofed: Victor’s funeral is shot and edited like those maudlin newsreels, celebrities in white clothes disembarking from cars to pay their tributes.

The cynical-comical treatment of Showtime is not surprising. Producer Karan Johar has made an art of turning self-awareness into a shield. The word ‘nepotism’ is uttered a couple of times here, as a harmless punchline (repeat a buzzword a million times over, Johar knows, and it becomes a joke). It has become a defence mechanism of sorts: Bollywood, mocked and derided and language-policed in an age of social media, taking on the task itself, and doing a better job of it. The Hindi film industry in Showtime is revealed to be a predictably preposterous place: petty, insecure, always star-and-profit-obsessed. There are few fresh insights to glean; as in his talk show, Johar keeps us out by letting us in.

Emraan Hashmi has spent the last decade seeking out respectable work (he was quietly moving in Danis Tanovic’s Pakistan-set drama Tigers). In Showtime, though, he’s fully committed as an unctuous and uppity wheeler-dealer, the kind of roles that marked the first flush of his storied career. His Raghu seems to carry an unspoken disdain for the vanity fair around him — a match for Hashmi, who gives much the same impression in real life. I just wish Mahima Makwana was a more forcible match for him. She is fine when giving the lip to her irascible uncle, but otherwise lands as a weak protagonist. Perhaps Mouni Roy, as former item queen and Raghu’s long-suffering wife Yasmin, will take more dramatic charge in future episodes (only 4 have released so far).

Showtime is fast and frivolous, but let’s convene after halftime.

Four episodes of Showtime are streaming on Disney+ Hotstar