Indian Matchmaking | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Genre | Reality television |
Created by | Smriti Mundhra |
Presented by | Sima Taparia |
Country of origin |
|
Original languages |
|
No. of seasons | 3 |
No. of episodes | 24 |
Production | |
Executive producers |
|
Running time | 26-42 minutes |
Production company | The Intellectual Property Corporation |
Original release | |
Network | Netflix |
Release | 16 July 2020 – present |
Indian Matchmaking is a 2020 Indian reality television series produced by Smriti Mundhra that premiered on Netflix on 16 July 2020. [1] [2] [3] In August 2021, Netflix renewed the series for a second season. [4] In March 2022, Netflix renewed the series for a third season, [5] which premiered in April 2023. [6]
Name | Age | Job | City | Seasons | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
Aparna Shewakramani | 34 | attorney and general counsel | Houston | Main | ||
Pradhyuman Maloo (sometimes referred as Pradhyumn) | 30 | jeweler | Mumbai | Main | ||
Nadia Christina Jagessar | 33 | event planner who runs her own company, Euphoria Events, and works as a marketer for Givaudan | New Jersey | Main | ||
Vyasar Ganesan | 30 | teacher, college counsellor, and writer | Austin | Main | ||
Akshay Jakhete | 36 | businessman | Mumbai | Main | ||
Ankita Bansal | 30 | businesswoman in garment e-commerce | Delhi | Main | ||
Rupam Kaur | Denver | Main |
Indian Matchmaking first aired on 16 July 2020, on Netflix.
No. overall | No. in season | Title | Original release date | |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | "Slim, Trim and Educated" | 16 July 2020 | |
Sima meets three unlucky-in-love clients: a stubborn Houston lawyer, a picky Mumbai bachelor and a misunderstood Morris Plains, N.J., event planner. | ||||
2 | 2 | "Just Find Me Someone!" | 16 July 2020 | |
Nadia's and Aparna’s dates have mixed results. Friends and family get honest with Pradhyuman. Sima consults a face reader for clarity on her clients. | ||||
3 | 3 | "I’m Trying My Best!" | 16 July 2020 | |
A setback with Vinay temporarily discourages Nadia. Sima offers two more prospects to Aparna. Feeling the pressure, Pradhyuman finally goes on a date. | ||||
4 | 4 | "I Want to See You Again" | 16 July 2020 | |
Nadia has a promising date. Pradhyuman sees a life coach. Sima sends Aparna to an astrologer and seeks a cultural match for guidance counselor Vyasar. | ||||
5 | 5 | "Take the Elephant out of the Room" | 16 July 2020 | |
A date with a model uplifts Pradhyuman. As Aparna’s luck seems to turn, Vyasar hits a snag. Akshay’s mother insists that he marry within the year. | ||||
6 | 6 | "It’s High Time" | 16 July 2020 | |
Vyasar and Rashi instantly bond. As Akshay rejects over 70 matches, Preeti gives him an ultimatum. Progressive Ankita looks for an equal partnership. | ||||
7 | 7 | "Marriages Are Breaking like Biscuits" | 16 July 2020 | |
Sima faces a challenge with single mother Rupam. A discovery about her match bothers Ankita. Vyasar frets over revealing his father’s past to Rashi. | ||||
8 | 8 | "Adjustment and Compromise" | 16 July 2020 | |
Akshay makes a decision while a new path emerges for Rupam. Ankita has an empowering realization. As her clients move on, Sima’s work never stops. |
No. overall | No. in season | Title | Original air date | |
---|---|---|---|---|
9 | 1 | "I've Dated Lots of Chicks" | 10 August 2022 | |
Sima meets Akshay, a bachelor whose small-town location has hindered his search for love. Meanwhile, some of her past clients return with new hopes. | ||||
10 | 2 | "Be a Boss, Marry a Boss, Build an Empire" | 10 August 2022 | |
Sima urges Akshay to change his thinking, and worries about Nadia and Vishal's differences. New client Viral shares her criteria for an ideal mate. | ||||
11 | 3 | "Ovo-lacto-semi-vegetarian" | 10 August 2022 | |
Viral and Aparna each go on first dates. Concerned that his past might hamper his future, Akshay takes action. Nadia faces a surprise in California. | ||||
12 | 4 | "I Love You Like a Friend" | 10 August 2022 | |
An old client returns — and he's not alone! Sima meets soft-spoken cardiologist Arshneel. Viral seeks a physical attraction. Aparna reflects on Daman. | ||||
13 | 5 | "The Looks of Clint Eastwood" | 10 August 2022 | |
A date leaves Arshneel apprehensive. Aparna reaches a conclusion about her needs. Sima and new client Shital debate compromise versus settling. | ||||
14 | 6 | "Very Chulbuli" | 10 August 2022 | |
Despite a rocky date, Viral may be smitten. Arshneel and Rinkle get off to a promising start. A charming but chatty prospect gives Shital pause. | ||||
15 | 7 | "All The Bases Covered" | 10 August 2022 | |
After a few flat dates, Shital worries about self-sabotage. Chemistry also proves elusive for Vinesh, Sima's new client, as he meets a potential match. | ||||
16 | 8 | "I Feel Like He's The One" | 10 August 2022 | |
Opening up to Aashay, Viral notices her softer side emerging. Still struggling to find a connection, Vinesh finally considers changing his own mindset. |
No. overall | No. in season | Title | Original air date | |
---|---|---|---|---|
17 | 1 | "Husband-in-Waiting" | 21 April 2023 | |
In London, Priya hopes for a new start and teacher Bobby wants out of the friend zone. In New Delhi, a client returns. A happy couple ponders next steps. | ||||
18 | 2 | "Take the Bobby" | 21 April 2023 | |
Sima meets with founders of South Asian dating apps. Bobby and Priya take a salsa class. Rushali worries a spouse will separate her from her parents. | ||||
19 | 3 | "An ABCD" | 21 April 2023 | |
Viral meets Aashay's parents. Rushali enjoys a first date — until it hits a snag. In California, Sima urges ER doctor Vikash to rethink his criteria. | ||||
20 | 4 | "A Top Knot Appreciator" | 21 April 2023 | |
Vikash struggles to let go of his checklist. A new prospect has Priya cautiously optimistic. A life coach helps Rushali open up. | ||||
21 | 5 | "Is Costco a Hobby?" | 21 April 2023 | |
As Priya considers rejecting an effusive suitor, Sima pushes back. Arti seeks a match with ambition and an edge. A familiar face returns with a new glow. | ||||
22 | 6 | "Wills and Whims and Fancies" | 21 April 2023 | |
The future looks bright for Shital and Priya. Arti begins to question Sima's outlook. Vikash and a date hit it off — but they have one big difference. | ||||
23 | 7 | "Daddy's Little Tall Girl" | 21 April 2023 | |
Finding a match for marketing professional Pavneet may be a tall order. Through a dating app, Arti finds the spark she's seeking — but Sima is skeptical. | ||||
24 | 8 | "Marry Me" | 21 April 2023 | |
Pavneet seeks clarity when a suitor is slow to follow up. Arti is in for a surprise. As for Sima? She remains in demand as ever. |
Series director Smriti Mundhra pitched the idea of the show to a TV producer in 2009/2010, but the show was rejected for "essentially not being white enough." [21] She pitched the show to Netflix by showing Taparia, who "were super excited about it." [22] She had met Taparia three years before Indian Matchmaking premiered on Netflix, when she documented the lives of other three women going through the Indian marriage process in the 2017 documentary, A Suitable Girl. [23] Taparia's daughter was one of the young women featured.[ citation needed ]
Mundhra named the casting the biggest hurdle of the show, going through a client list of 500 families and calling to see if they were willing to be on camera. Mundhra also noted that the series initially started with about a dozen singles but some of those "fell off" during production. [10]
The show received mixed reviews between critics and social media users. [24] [25] [26] Inkoo Kang of The Hollywood Reporter called the show "insightful, humorous and heartwarming," praising how it showcases the preoccupation with height and caste, as well as Taparia's matchmaking tactics. [3] Kristen Baldwin of Entertainment Weekly gave the show a B+, stating that the show as presented in a "glossy, cosmopolitan drama, without a hint of 'look at these crazy foreigners and their kooky customs!' condescension." [27] Joel Keller of Decider called people to stream it, saying that it "brings thousands of years of tradition into the mix, and there’s a much better chance that the matches that are made at the end of the season will last." [28] Archi Sengupta of Techquila rated the show 4 stars out of 5, calling it "sweet and entertaining." [29]
Though the show is called Indian Matchmaking, it portrays no couples who identify as Muslim, Christian, or Dalit— communities that represent close to 40 percent of India's population. [30] [31] The show has also been criticised for normalizing caste based discrimination such as when matchmaker Taparia declares "In India, we have to see the caste, we have to see the height..." which Yashica Dutt of The Atlantic describes as "lump[ing] an entire social system, which assigns people to a fixed place in a hierarchy from birth, together with anodyne physical preferences." [30] Per Dutt, in the show, caste preference is coded into harmless phrases such as "similar backgrounds," "shared communities," and "respectable families," and "the show does exactly what many upper-caste Indian families tend to do when discussing this fraught subject: It makes caste invisible." [30] The show was also said to further endorse and promote gender stereotypes. [32]
In addition to showing "classist" and "casteist" stereotypes, the show was criticised for whitewashing the idea of arranged marriages. [31] [33] [34] Kennith Rosario of The Hindu labeled the show as "The big fat desi stereotype," saying that the characters "believe in some of the most atavistic ideals of marriage, and the show, in its glossy demeanour, endorses it." [35] [36] Sushri Sahu of Mashable gave the show a 2/5 on the Mash Meter, criticizing how the show is "problematic and cheesy in equal parts." [37] In response to the criticisms, Smriti Mundhra stated that she hoped that "it will spark a lot of conversations that all of us need to be having in the South Asian community with our families – that it’ll be a jumping-off point for reflections about the things that we prioritize, and the things that we internalize.” [38] [39] Ravi Guru Singh, a cast member who wrote a personal piece for the Huffington Post about his appearance on episode 2 of the show, criticized the producers for misrepresenting his appearance and failing to "discuss and explore casteism, homophobia and ethnocentrism." [40]
The Los Angeles Times followed up with the couples appearing on the show and reported that they are not together anymore. [41]
Sanjay Balraj Dutt is an Indian actor, playback singer and film producer who works in Hindi cinema in addition to a few Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Punjabi films. One of the most popular and recognised actors of Hindi cinema, in a career spanning over four decades, Dutt has won several accolades and acted in over 135 films.
Arranged marriage is a tradition in the societies of the Indian subcontinent, and continues to account for an overwhelming majority of marriages in the Indian subcontinent. Despite the fact that romantic love is "wholly celebrated" in both Indian mass media and folklore, and the arranged marriage tradition lacks any official legal recognition or support, the institution has proved to be "surprisingly robust" in adapting to changed social circumstances and has defied predictions of decline as India modernized.
Patricia Stanger is an American businesswoman, reality television personality, and founder and CEO of matchmaking service Millionaire's Club International. She is known for starring in and producing her own matchmaking reality series, The Millionaire Matchmaker, on Bravo.
Shaadi.com is an Indian online wedding service founded in 1997. Its core market is India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, but the company operates globally, with offices in Canada, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Bengali Kayastha is a Bengali Hindu caste originated from the Bengal region of Indian subcontinent, and is one of the main subgroups of the Kayastha community. The historical caste occupation of Kayasthas throughout India has been that of scribes, administrators, ministers and record-keepers; the Kayasthas in Bengal, along with Brahmins and Baidyas, are regarded among the three traditional higher castes that comprise the "upper layer of Hindu society". During the British Raj, the Bhadraloks of Bengal were drawn primarily, but not exclusively, from these three castes, who continue to maintain a collective hegemony in West Bengal.
Sanya Malhotra is an Indian actress who works in Hindi films. She has had supporting roles in the sports film Dangal (2016) and the action film Jawan (2023), both of which rank among the highest-grossing Indian films. Her other commercially successful films were the comedy Badhaai Ho (2018) and the biopic Sam Bahadur (2023).
Abhimanyu Dassani is an Indian actor who works in Hindi films. The son of actress Bhagyashree, he made his acting debut in 2018 with the action film Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota, for which he won Filmfare Award for Best Male Debut. He has since starred in the romantic comedy Meenakshi Sundareshwar (2021) and the action film Nikamma (2022).
Delhi Crime is an Indian police procedural crime drama television series written and directed by Richie Mehta. Creative manager Chirag Shah and produced by Golden Karaven, Ivanhoe Productions, Film Karavan and Poor Man's Productions. The series star Shefali Shah, Rasika Dugal, Adil Hussain and Rajesh Tailang. The first season is set in the aftermath of the 2012 Delhi gang rape. The second season focuses on the Chaddi Baniyan Gang.
Sarita Khurana is a film director, producer, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. Khurana's films explore South Asian stories from female perspectives. Migration, memory, culture, gender, and sexuality are common themes throughout her work. Khurana was the first Desi woman to win the Albert Maysles New Documentary Director Award at Tribeca Film Festival with her collaborator, Smriti Mundhra.
A Suitable Girl is a 2017 documentary film directed by Sarita Khurana and Smriti Mundhra. The film was screened at SAWCC on 7 April 2017 before premiering on 22 April at the Tribeca Film Festival, winning the Albert Maysles New Documentary Director Award. Khurana and Mundra were the first Desi women to earn the New Documentary Director Award. The film has also been screened at the British Film Institute Festival, Mumbai Film Festival, AFI Docs, Amazon and Netflix. In 2018, Library Journal reviewed and recommended the film be included in library collections.
Smriti Mundhra is an American filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her production company, Meralta Films, specializes in documentary films and non-fiction content.
Love on the Spectrum is an Australian reality television show that follows people on the autism spectrum as they explore the dating world. The show is produced by Northern Pictures for ABC TV, and was made available to stream on ABC iview and Netflix.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is a nonfiction book by the American journalist Isabel Wilkerson, published in August 2020 by Random House. The book describes racism in the United States as an aspect of a caste system—a society-wide system of social stratification characterized by notions such as hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, and purity. Wilkerson does so by comparing aspects of the experience of American people of color to the caste systems of India and Nazi Germany, and she explores the impact of caste on societies shaped by them, and their people.
Mismatched is an Indian Hindi-language coming-of-age romantic drama television series on Netflix, based on Sandhya Menon's 2017 novel When Dimple Met Rishi. It was adapted by Gazal Dhaliwal and directed by Akarsh Khurana and Nipun Dharmadhikari. It is produced by Ronnie Screwvala's RSVP Movies. Starring Prajakta Koli, Rohit Saraf, Rannvijay Singha and Vidya Malvade in prominent roles, the series is about Rishi, a die-hard romantic who believes in traditional ways of dating, who falls for Dimple, a gamer, and eventually wants to marry her.
Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives is an Indian reality television series. The show focuses on the personal and professional lives of Neelam Kothari, Maheep Kapoor, Bhavna Pandey and Seema Kiran Sajdeh, wives of Bollywood actors Samir Soni, Sanjay Kapoor, Chunky Pandey and Sohail Khan (divorced) respectively. The series debuted on 27 November 2020 on Netflix. A second season premiered on 2 September 2022.
Yisroel Bernath is an American Hassidic rabbi, actor, screenwriter and podcaster active in Canada. Bernath is spiritual director at Chabad of NDG and the Jewish Chaplain at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Coined by the Montreal Gazette as the "Love Rabbi" and the "Hipster Rabbi" by Viceland, he is a well-known matchmaker and relationship coach. He is the subject of the CBC Documentaries Kosher Love and its sequel, Meet, Pray, Love: Return of the Love Rabbi.
Meenakshi Sundareshwar is a 2021 Indian Hindi-language romantic comedy film directed by Vivek Soni, who co-wrote the script with Aarsh Vora and produced by Karan Johar, Apoorva Mehta and Somen Mishra, under the banner Dharmatic Entertainment, the digital arm of Johar's Dharma Productions. The film stars Sanya Malhotra and Abhimanyu Dassani as the titular characters, a newly-wed couple, who were forced to live apart due to a unique job prospect and struggles with the problems arise from their long-distance marriage.
The following is a list of events affecting Tamil language television in 2020 from. Events listed include television show debuts, and finales; channel launches, and closures; stations changing or adding their network affiliations; and information about changes of ownership of channels or stations.
Aleeza Ben Shalom is an American–Israeli matchmaker, relationship coach, author, and reality television personality. She is prominently featured in the Netflix series Jewish Matchmaking, which follows her attempts at helping Jewish singles in the United States and Israel find love and get married.