Decoupled, a new Netflix series starring R Madhavan and Surveen Chawla, has become quite the talk of the town ever since its release. Spewing uncomfortable truths about our lives through comedy, Season 1 of the series seems to have hit home with the audiences. The show has been created by author and journalist Manu Joseph, whose book Serious Men was made into a Netflix film last year.
Madhavan and Surveen star as a quarreling couple on the verge of a divorce. While Surveen’s Shruti is a corporate woman, Arya Iyer, Madhavan’s character, is a writer in competition with Chetan Bhagat, who also makes an appearance in the show. Arya comes across as a bit of a misanthrope, who often puts his foot in the mouth to make matters worse for himself. His habit of unapologetically speaking his mind is often misinterpreted as offensive.
A character like this could go either ways with the audience, but Manu is confident about his relatability. “There’s an Arya in all of us, we just keep him shut. People are so bored of well-behaved people. I remember once I interviewed Shoaib Akhtar, who says very wise things in very simple ways. He said, people may not be able to articulate, but they can see through you. There is no mask. So people like Arya might actually do well, because they because they interesting, and they know that people can see that they’re not fakes, but sometimes they can get into serious trouble,” Joseph tells News18.
The subject is very relatable – an urban couple whose marriage is not really working, and one person who has very strong opinions about life and marriage in general and man-woman relationships. How much of it is actually based on people we see around in real life?
“100 per cent. Plus, I don’t think comedy is possible from fantasy, or with too much imagination. There is a kind of imagination which comes from observation, which is an exaggeration of reality, which fiction needs, but every single thing in this show comes from something which happens around us,” Manu insists.
He brings up an interesting point about marriage. “I feel that couples are very good at quarreling, because they have the same quarrels every week. And they get better and better, and their arguments are better and better, because they are saying the same things. The Western writers very often say how life life is an act without rehearsal, which makes no sense when you look at real life. Because, for example, marriage is the same play every day. Married couples have fights because they’re so good at it they can’t just let go, they’ve got something that has been stewing. And they’ve got an additional argument against this argument, which they will know will come. So in order to capture all that, we also wanted to show good conversations,” Manu explains.
R Madhavan and Surveen Chawla have done full justice to their roles, despite the fact that Decoupled is very different from anything they have done before. Manu insists getting them on board wasn’t tough at all. “Madhavan came on board the moment he read the screenplay and spoke to us. Surveen’s character, people might not realize, is very difficult, because she’s this tolerant wife, at the same time, she should not be the spoilsport. People should not say oh, she’s always complaining. I wanted her to be a very likable character, so we discussed all that. And then the actors were very enthusiastic once they saw the full scope of the show,” Manu elaborates.
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