OTT Review: Four More Shots Please!

When the first season of Four More Shots Please! released in 2019, a lot of people loved it, a lot of people hated it, but nobody could really ignore it. For one simple reason: it was touted as the desi avatar of Sex and the City. Four young women, all of them unapologetic about their life choices (and, most importantly, their sexuality), go about their lives in the bustling metropolis of Mumbai (which is airbrushed to perfection and would probably give New York a run quicker than the bull on Wall Street). Significantly, like that other serial, Friends, that set benchmarks the world over, there is a ‘hangout’ setting like Central Perk. In Four More Shots Please!, much of the action — or implied action — takes place in a watering hole called Truck, which has assumed pride of place through the course of its many ups and downs.

Dee, Mangs, Anj and Sids all had their occupations, occupational hazards and preoccupations to make a viewer’s choice interesting for the past two seasons, when they loved (and lusted) and were loved back in return; many times, they loved and lost. All along their friendship remained the bulwark. Season 3, which released recently, is reportedly the last season, so it is almost fitting that it doesn’t end with life being boxed into neat packages. This was a series finale as open as it possibly can be — unless, of course, there is yet another season which we don’t know of.

The four ladies are all, in parts, lovable and annoying, professing First World problems that are engaging and exasperating. The larger interplay remains relatable and relevant — at least, in soft focus. In this season, contend with Anj’s possibility of getting back together with her now-married ex-husband (she co-parents a rather irritating daughter with him). Mangs opens her own fitness studio, not without drama. Dee gets involved with a young politician’s election campaign. And Sids tries to overcome her father’s death (he passed away at the end of Season 2) while trying to be a good daughter to her mother Sneha (played beautifully by the gorgeous Simone Singh).

But if there is a star of the show, it has to be Jim Sarbh, who plays Sean, Mangs’ employee. He again proves what an underutilised actor he is in Bollywood. The same would apply to Prateik Babbar, who plays Dee’s on-off boyfriend Jeh; having said that, since Jeh has been fixture from Season 1, you don’t feel the wow factor as strongly as you do with Sean.

I was also chuffed see the late Bollywood actor Vinod Mehra’s son, Rohan Mehra, fetch up in the role of the politician Dee begins to work for. He’s not bad at all, and let’s hope we see more of him on OTT in days to come. Shilpa Shukla (remember the mean hockey player from Chak De India and the corrupting ‘aunty’ from BA Pass?) shows up in yet another unconventional role, but let me not throw up more spoilers.

All in all, Four More Shots Please! will definitely have you rolling your eyes and maybe even cringing at the illogic of it all from time to time, but it’s a breezy, easy binge-watch, which is not altogether devoid of life lessons.

sushmita@khaleejtimes.com

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