Made in Heaven (TV series)

Made In Heaven is a 2019 Indian romantic drama web series that premiered on Amazon Video on 8 March 2019.[2] Produced by Excel Entertainment, the series chronicles the lives of Tara and Karan, two wedding planners in Delhi running an agency named Made in Heaven. The series is Amazon Video’s fourth fictional Indian original series and stars Sobhita Dhulipala, Arjun Mathur, Kalki Koechlin, Jim Sarbh, Shashank Arora, and Shivani Raghuvanshi.

Made In Heaven
Promotional poster
GenreDrama
Romance
Created by
Written byReema Kagti
Zoya Akhtar
Alankrita Shrivastava
Directed byNitya Mehra
Zoya Akhtar
Prashant Nair
Alankrita Shrivastava
StarringArjun Mathur
Sobhita Dhulipala
Kalki Koechlin
Jim Sarbh
Shashank Arora
Shivani Raghuvanshi
Country of originIndia
Original languagesHindi
English
No. of seasons1
No. of episodes9[1] (list of episodes)
Production
Production companiesExcel Entertainment
Tiger Baby Films
Release
Original networkAmazon Video
Original release8 March 2019 (2019-03-08) –
present

Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti created the show, and they wrote it with Alankrita Shrivastava. Akhtar, Shrivastava, Nitya Mehra, and Prashant Nair served as directors for the nine-episodes of the first season.[3] Work on the second season was to begin in April 2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [4][5]

Plot

Made in Heaven portrays today’s India as a blend of old and new, where tradition and modern aspirations are in tension. The show and protagonist narratives play out against the backdrop of lavish and expansive weddings.[6] Critics have described it as a telling story about human nature and greater social dynamics in Delhi.[7]

Cast

Main

Recurring

Guest

Episodes
No.TitleDirected byWritten byOriginal release date
1"All That Glitters Is Gold"Zoya AkhtarAlankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Tara Khanna and Karan Mehra are the co-owners of Made In Heaven, a wedding planning agency in south Delhi. Tara is married to Adil Khanna, the heir to a wealthy family of industrialists, but is ambitious about running her own business despite already living in wealth. Karan, on the other hand, struggles financially, and is a closeted homosexual. Karan and Tara outcompete a rival wedding planning agency, Harmony, in arranging the wedding of Angad Roshan, heir to the powerful Roshan dynasty. However, Angad's parents do not trust his fiancée Aliya, and have Tara and Karan perform a background check on her; they discourage Angad from marrying Aliya after learning she is not a virgin and once had an abortion. Karan convinces Angad to lie to his parents that the child was his own, but Aliya is incensed that Angad must lie about her past to his family and walks out on him during a prenuptial ceremony. Tara later convinces Aliya to reconcile with Angad, suggesting that she will become financially destitute if she derails her marriage. The two of them ultimately marry.
2"Star Struck Lovers"Zoya AkhtarAlankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Things get ugly when the film star Sarfaraz Khan kisses the bride Harsimran at one of the wedding events. The groom Joginder is livid and attempts to break into Khan's hotel room to attack him. Joginder’s parents eventually step in to defuse the situation. Tara and Karan then find out that Harsimran also slept with Khan that night. However, they are able to delete evidence of the affair from the hotel cameras before anyone else can find out. Jazz, a young Made In Heaven employee who Karan has taken under his wing, gets into trouble for sharing pictures from the wedding on her Facebook page, but she makes up for it by helping Joginder and Harsimran make up. Tara convinces Harsimran to pray at Joginder’s gurudwara and cook prasad for him. They eventually reconcile and the wedding successfully goes through. Meanwhile, Tara suspects Adil of having an affair. She confides in her best friend Faiza, who dismisses her concerns as paranoia. However, Adil is later shown to be having an affair with Faiza.
3"It's Never Too Late"Nitya MehraAlankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Tara and Karan organize the wedding of an elderly couple, Gayatri Mathur and Bijoy Chatterjee. Gayatri's children disapprove of the marriage and initially refuse to attend the wedding, but Karan eventually convinces them otherwise. Meanwhile, Karan finds out that his former lover is now engaged to his former classmate, Bubbles. Karan decides to tell Bubbles the truth, and she requests that he keep it between them. Flashbacks reveal Tara’s lower-middle-class background before she married into the Khanna family. Karan tells a friend about his previous business venture which failed, prompting his mother to force his father into financially rescuing him; he then borrowed money from the street to start Made in Heaven and is currently paying off heavy debt. Adil and Faiza take a weekend getaway, but get into a car crash on the way home.
4"The Price of Love"Nitya MehraAlankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Tara finds out about Adil's affair when he and Faiza are hospitalized after their car accident. Nevertheless, she agrees to donate blood to Faiza, whose condition is critical at the time. Tara and Karan lose the contract for Bubbles’ wedding when she decides to go with another company. The financial strain forces Karan to agree to organizing a wedding in Ludhiana for a friend. Meanwhile, Made in Heaven plans the wedding of IAS officer Vishal and his fiancée Priyanka. On the day of the wedding, Vishal's seemingly progressive parents demand a huge dowry and threaten to cancel the wedding if refused; Priyanka comes to find out that Vishal had covertly agreed to the plan, and walks out of the wedding. Tara confronts Adil about his affair. He apologizes and promises to make things right, but she rebuffs him. Jazz uses the her company credit card to buy fancy clothes for herself. She plans to return them, but Karan fires her after Shibani, an employee who resents being underpaid for her skills and effort, reports the theft to him. Shibani is later offered an interview with Harmony. Karan hooks up with someone he meets at a bar. Unbeknown to him, his landlord has installed a camera in his room and secretly watches them make love.
5"A Marriage of Convenience"Prashant NairAlankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Made in Heaven organizes a wedding in Ludhinana for an NRI groom who holds a contest to choose a local bride. The bride finds out that the groom is impotent on their wedding night. Afraid of the stigma associated with the dissolution of marriage, she decides to move to America anyway. Jazz’s drug addict brother steals money and jewelry from their mother and disappears. Jazz eventually finds him and brings him home. Karan’s landlord’s wife finds videos of Karan on her husband’s laptop. He tells her he was gathering evidence to file a police report when she confronts him. Karan is arrested at the end of the episode.
6"Something Old, Something New"Prashant NairAlankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Karan spends a couple of nights in prison where he is sexually assaulted by a police officer. Tara eventually manages to bail him out. He decides to move back to his rented place and sue the landlord. Made In Heaven arranges the wedding of Gitanjali, a banker and Wharton graduate with Nikhil, an NRI doctor. An astrologer claims that Gitanjali is mangalik and must marry a tree first to defuse any ill luck. Gitanjali agrees but Nikhil freaks out when she tells him. He reasons with Gitanjali and she pretends to agree with him. Later she goes through with the tree marriage ceremony behind his back. Shibani leaves the company and joins Harmony Weddings. Adil undergoes some medical tests and learns that he has a low sperm count. Tara convinces him to take the supplements prescribed by the doctor. He visits Faiza but she tells him that she cannot be with him. Tara has been ignoring Faiza’s calls. She eventually goes to her house and trashes the place in anger. Karan’s landlord apologizes to him and reveals that he too is gay and has been hiding it all his life.
7"A Royal Affair"Nitya MehraAlankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
8"Pride and Bridezilla"Alankrita ShrivastavaAlankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
9"The Great Escape"Alankrita ShrivastavaAlankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Karan and Tara work on the wedding of two major warring political parties, looking to consolidate their power through a marriage between the son and daughter of party leaders. Unfortunately for them - the daughter of one of the leaders is already in love with someone from college, whom she has been in a relationship with for several years. Out of fear of her parents, she relents to this political marriage. However, once Karan and Tara learn about her situation, they decide to help her escape from this forced relationship. Additionally, they learn that this bride-to-be's elder sister was killed by her own parents with a pretense of suicide as her sister defied her parents in loving a man they didn't approve off (after her boyfriend was killed by them). With elaborate planning, they remove the girl from her fortified house the day before marriage. She ends up marrying her boyfriend in a church and tells the media - that if she or her husband die, blame lies on her parents for conspiring against them. Meanwhile - both Karan and Tara face their own personal struggles and attempt to resolve them. With Karan - he confronts his own ghosts of hiding his homosexuality when he gets a Facebook message from Nawab supporting his fight for LGBTQ equality. Viewers are showed in a flashback - Karan's first crush is his school mate Nawab, which seems to be exposed in a gym locker amongst his friends when Nawab's written love note for Karan is found by them. When Karan is confronted by his friends, he states that Nawab is trying to impose his homosexuality on him and then leads a homophobic attack on Nawab, terrorizing him. This causes Nawab to leave school with Karan guilt ridden for being the aggressor against him. Bringing this memory to light, Karan meets up with Nawab, who is now married. Karan apologizes to Nawab and then two engage in a passionate night of sexual intercourse that never materialized when they were teenagers with mutual affection. Karan shares his emotional vulnerability with him and tells Nawab that he is the first true love of his. Nawab forgives him and the two continue to bond. With Tara - she participates in an intimate small dinner party with her husband and in-laws. During the dinner, Adil continues to get repeated phone calls from Faiza, that he eventually picks up. Upon his return, Tara publicly confronts him about this and then privately both fight about their broken relationship. Tara laments her relationship with him and regrets having a deceitful start to their relationship. It is shown in a flashback that Tara intentionally engaged in sex with Adil in his office to have it recorded. It was she who stealthily stole the recording and leaked him - using it as a means to get closer to Adil, break his engagement and allow herself to enter his rich lifestyle by being his wife. With this broken relationship, she realizes that she is paying the sins of breaking his previous relationship. With deep remorse and shame, she leaves the mansion and meets up with Karan in their office. They discover that it has been vandalized by extremist right-wing groups. Both Karan and Tara laugh at their tragedy and feel satisfied that they can re-start their new lives with the expensive jewelry that Tara brought with her.

Promotion and release

The official trailer of the web series was released on 15 February 2019. The web series released on 8 March 2019 on Prime Video.[14]

Reception

The show has received largely positive reviews with several critics and online reviews praising the series' dark take on the Big Fat Indian Wedding. Soumya Srivastava of Hindustan Times gave Made In Heaven four stars out of five, terming it the best desi original by Amazon Prime. Srivastava opines that Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti’s new show will keep you hooked.[15] Sanjukta Sharma of Scroll.in praised the performances, writing, "...performances, especially by Mathur and Dhulipala, engagingly and steadfastly chart a convincing trajectory of early struggles, promise, dysfunction, despair and uplifting resignation. The show's costumes received major acclaim as well with fashion critic, Shivani Yadav doing a complete episode-by-episode analysis on her blog Critic Corner." [16]

Awards & Nominations
Year Award Category Nominee(s) Result Ref.
2019 iReel Awards Best Drama Series Made In Heaven Nominated
Best Actor -Drama Arjun Mathur Nominated
Best Actress -Drama Sobhita Dhulipala Nominated
Best Supporting Actor Jim Sarbh Nominated
Best Supporting Actress Shivani Raghuvanshi Nominated
Best Writing -Drama Reema Kagti, Zoya Akhtar & Alankrita Shrivastava Nominated
Best Music Made In Heaven Nominated [17]
2020 International Emmy Awards Best Actor Arjun Mathur Nominated

Soundtrack
Made in Heaven
Soundtrack album by
Sagar Desai, Dub Sharma, Balkrishan Sharma and Sherry Mathews
Released1 March 2019[18]
Recorded2018
GenrePrime Original Tv Series Soundtrack
Length16:31
LanguageHindi
LabelSony Music for Amazon Music
External audio
Made in Heaven
Album on Amazon Music

The music is composed by Sagar Desai, Dub Sharma, Balkrishan Sharma and Sherry Mathews. Songs are rendered by Rituraj, Farad Bhiwandiwala and Viba Saraf. Qawwali "Aye re sakhi more piya ghar aaye" is rendered by M S Nizami Brothers and chorus "Perfect Love" by Aadya Jaswal, Avika Diwan and Mehak Sanghera. Lyrics for "Jiya Jaye" and "Musafir" have been written by Amanda Sodhi.

Track listing
No.TitleSinger(s)Length
1."Aye re sakhi more piya ghar aaye"M S Nizami Brothers6:19
2."Jiya jaye"Rituraj Mohanty2:17
3."Musafir"Farad Bhiwandiwala1:11
4."Baarat Company"Rituraj1:57
5."Roshay"Viba Saraf2:22
6."Perfect Love"Aadya Jaswal, Avika Diwan and Mehak Sanghera2:25
Total length:16:31

References
  1. "Made In Heaven trailer: The web series delves into the madness behind Indian weddings". Indian Express. 14 February 2019.
  2. "Zoya Akhtar's web series Made in Heaven to air on March 8, first look revealed".
  3. "Reema Kagti: Made in Heaven has all the ingredients for a delicious drama". The Indian Express. 7 March 2019. Retrieved 8 March 2019.
  4. "Zoya Akhtar announces Made in Heaven Season 2: Back to work". India Today. 3 April 2019. Retrieved 14 April 2019.
  5. "'Made in Heaven 2' to Go on Floors Soon, Gets a Release Date?". The Quint. 30 January 2020. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
  6. "Farhan Akhtar unveils first look poster of web series Made In Heaven". IndianExpress. 17 January 2019. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
  7. "Made in Heaven is about society!". Kovid Gupta Films. 2019. Retrieved 25 June 2019.
  8. Raggett, Matthew. Sampath, Karan (ed.). "The Doon School Informational Review". The Doon School Weekly. No. May 2019. The Doon School. p. 19. Retrieved 30 May 2020 – via issuu.com. It was good to see two Doscos amongst the cast as they make their way in the world; Aditi Joshi played the bride in the first episode and Neel Madhav played Karan's younger brother in two episodes.
  9. "All That Glitters Is Gold". Made in Heaven. Season 1. Episode 1. March 2019. Event occurs at 21m44s. Amazon. Retrieved 30 May 2020.
  10. Pandya, Sonal (17 January 2019). "First Look: Made in Heaven". Cinestaan. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
  11. "'Made in Heaven' trailer: Big fat weddings and secrets in Amazon Prime Original series". Scroll. 14 February 2019.
  12. Made in Heaven (TV Series 2019– ) - IMDb, retrieved 3 April 2019
  13. "Made in Heaven (TV Series 2019- )", IMDb, 8 March 2019
  14. "Made in Heaven -Trailer - Prime Original 2019 - 8th March 2019| Amazon Prime Video". Amazon Video Prime India on YouTube. 15 February 2019.
  15. "Made In Heaven review: The best desi original by Amazon Prime, it unmasks the shiny lies of big fat Indian weddings". Hindustan Times. 8 March 2019. Retrieved 8 March 2019.
  16. Sharma, Sanjukta. "'Made in Heaven' review: Strong performances and sharp writing, but the weddings get in the way". Scroll.in. Retrieved 14 March 2019.
  17. "iReel Awards 2019: Check Out The Complete List Of Winners". News18. 23 September 2019. Retrieved 23 September 2019.
  18. "Check out Made in Heaven (Music from the Prime Original Series) by Sagar Desai, Dub Sharma, Balkrishan Sharma & Sherry Mathews on Amazon Music". Amazon Music. 3 March 2019.
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