Netflix India has premiered a new coming-of-age rom-com series for its Gen Z audience, called Mismatched. Adapted from Sandhya Menon’s 2017 The New York Times bestseller When Dimple Met Rishi, the six-episode series revolves around an arranged marriage setup gone awry for two teenagers. However, there is nothing old school about Mismatched, just enough growing up left to do.
Rishi (Rohit Saraf) is an arranged marriage enthusiast and Dimple (Prajakta Koli) is (thankfully) too young to think of anything other than coding apps, even though her conservative Punjabi mother believes otherwise. Matched by their guardians, Dimple’s mother plots for the two to meet in Jaipur, where Rishi lives, by allowing Dimple to go there for a 3-month coding summer camp. But while old-school boy Rishi hopes to woo Dimple all on the basis of a once-seen photo, the latter has no clue what her mother has been up to, courtesy of a matrimonial WhatsApp group. (The fact that it’s illegal for a man to be married until 21 in India, seems to be a minor detail.)
Do the two teens end up getting along, find friendship, and perhaps deeper feelings thereafter? Watch the trailer here.
Mismatched brings in several light and frothy moments like the book promised while showcasing that growing up in this tech-savvy world is not easy. The two lead actors bring in convincing performances as two teenagers with all the bravado that their dreams would succeed while having no clue of who they are as human beings… yet. Prajakta Koli is a famous YouTuber known by her YouTube name ‘Mostly Sane‘, while Rohit Saraf was last seen in The Sky Is Pink and Ludo.
The show is well supported by an ensemble of characters played by good actors, too. With Vihaan Samat as the NRI Harsh Agarwal attending the camp as an excuse to spend time with his grandparents, Rannvijay Singha as the cool teacher Siddharth Sinha, or Vidya Malvade as the recently widowed Zeenath Karim who is taking another chance at life, the series has another six characters, at least, whose stories could all spiral out into their versions of Mismatched in the following seasons.
However, the series has an adult gaze, lacking a teen outlook to these narratives of young adults in its screenplay. And it leaves us with a cliffhanger moment that does not arrive organically. The six-episode series probably needed another six episodes to do justice to the varied sidetracks or the finale. Perhaps this may be why it fails to be the Sex Education equivalent it aspires to be.
Mismatched has been created by Akarsh Khurana, who gave us the gem Karwaan in 2018. It has been adapted for the screen by Gazal Dhaliwal, Aarsh Vora, and Sunayana Kumari and co-directed by Akarsh Khurana and Nipun Dharmadhikari.
Produced by RSVP Films for Netflix, Mismatched in streaming on Netflix since yesterday, 20 November 2020.