In the midst of crime and cop shows all over, a family comedy comes as a relief, notes Deepa Gahlot.
Bring a cute baby on board, and it's half the battle won.
Single Papa is set in a nouveau riche complex of row houses in Gurugram, pretentiously called Buckingham Palaces, and is somewhat reminiscent of the 1985 comedy, Three Men And A Cradle, and slightly to the hilarious new Rowan Atkinson show, Man vs Baby.
Here resides Gaurav (Kunal Kemmu), the overgrown man-child, who takes his divorce lightly enough to come to court with his cap on backwards.
The main reason for the split is his wife's (Isha Talwar) reluctance to have a child.
Gaurav's parents, Jatin and Poonam (Manoj Pahwa-Ayesha Raza) are overprotective, and his sister Namrata (Prajakta Koli) is more worried about her own coming wedding to namby-pamby Goldie (Ankur Rathee).
The fiancé lives in a mansion that Gaurav comments looks like a Heeramandi set, and his parents look down upon the 'Jatton ki ladki'. But that is a drama for future episodes.
Out on the town with his buddy Pawan (Suhail Nayyar), celebrating his freedom, and flirting with a woman in the bar, Gaurav discovers a baby left in his car in an Amul carton.
He brings the 'cutu' home, and the family, all aflutter, manages to feed and change him.
The kid gets ill suddenly and turns out to have a hole in his heart that necessitates surgery. This otherwise needless emergency is only to bring Mrs Nehra (Neha Dhupia) to the hospital to take charge of the baby.
She belongs to a women and children's welfare organisation and runs a picturesque orphanage.
Gaurav has a run in with her, and she becomes the biggest obstacle in his quest to adopt the baby named Amul because of the carton.
His family is against the adoption and throws him out of the house.
Not a major problem because there is a neighbouring bungalow, which he can move into and baby-proof, to impress Mrs Nehra.
Apart from her anger at his uncouth behaviour with her, the stern Mrs Nehra is convinced that Gaurav is unfit to take care of a baby.
Luckily for him, Mrs Nehra's frighteningly well-informed son, Shlok (Azinkya Mishra) believes that Gaurav will make a good dad and helps him without his mother's knowledge.
Created by Neeraj Udhwani and Ishita Moitra, directed by Shashank Khaitan, Hitesh Kewalya and Udwani, most of the show is about Gaurav trying to fight Mrs Nehra's hostility and a system that makes adoption difficult for single men.
It requires a series of deceptions, lies and help from strangers.
Namrata is forced to give a declaration that she will never marry and be the constant female presence that the adoption rules demand. When she and her fiancé run into Mrs Nehra at a restaurant, Namrata has to crazily ad lib.
A woman at the parenting class he joins -- he's the only man there -- helps him with tips and a male nanny or 'manny', in the form of the gentle giant Parbat Singh, Daya Shetty of CID's 'darwaza todo' fame, cast for comic effect and also to prove the reverse sexism of the notion that men cannot be good child carers.
Gaurav does discover, though, that looking after a kid is tough, and life has to be put on hold because a feeding-pooping-crying baby is a full-time occupation.
All this done with relentless good cheer, and no real sense of tension. Even the 'middle class' of Gurugram live lavishly and drive fancy cars, and jobs are easy to come by -- the issue of financial pressure or space does not spoil the light mood.
Considering the 'apna khoon' belief that prevents the childless from opting for adoption, the series serves up a message with comic flair. That is, until the plot runs out of steam and derails by the time Namrata's chaotic wedding arrives.
The added complication of Jatin suspecting his wife of cheating on him, or a neighbour being mistreated by his son, are just extra padding.
Within its circle of comedy, the show has a nicely casual attitude towards divorce, career women, parenting and greedy godmen -- it would be interesting to see how baby Amul grows up in a two-man household though there is a possibility of a romance between Gaurav and Goldie's cousin (Aisha, who is, conveniently, a paediatrician).
Kunal Kemmu, a fine actor, takes to the role of the immature Gaurav who grows up almost overnight, with relish.
There is the tendency of the others to overact like they were in an old style television sitcom, but in the midst of crime and cop shows all over, a family comedy comes as a relief.
Single Papa streams on Netflix.
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