BOTTOM LINE
Pointless, Boring Dud
RATING
1/5
PLATFORM
ETV Win – 3 hours (6 Episodes)
What Is the Show About?
Arjun, Rahul and Shreya are close buddies-turned-roommates in Hyderabad. The trio is soon joined by Arjun’s long-time friend Ram, an aspirant writer and an eccentric genius. When Meghana enters his life, it’s love at first sight for Ram. Though Meghana reciprocates his feelings, Ram steps back when he realises Arjun is also in love with her. Where’s the love triangle headed?
Performances
None of the performances are really noteworthy or make a strong impression. The women in the show – Bindu Nuthakki, Priya Vadlamani and Jeevan Priya Reddy – fare slightly better, have decent screen presence and timing, though their roles lack much meat. Among the rest, Ganaaditya is the least impactful of the lot while Vignay Abhishek, Shivanth Yachamaneni shine in parts.
Analysis
There’s much to like about stories of friendship and romance spanning years. It’s packed with bittersweet nostalgia; the genre comes with self-reflection and makes you look at your past and its mistakes with kindness. From a storytelling perspective, it’s also a good space to pack in a rollercoaster of emotions, dealing with moral dilemmas and impulsive choices that could alter your course.
Sammelanam looks back at the tale of four friends who’ve parted ways owing to a messy situation in their lives. While dealing with a familiar theme, the show, directed by Tharun Mahadev, has many loose ends, vague characters and is emotionally inert to leave a lasting impact. It jumps from one plot-point to the other aimlessly and the tale lacks any sense of direction or purpose.
What the director essentially has in mind are a few randomly developed character sketches where he puts his protagonists through many eccentric situations and unusual relationships and never allows us to invest in or relate to any of them. The ideas are not fresh, and the storyteller does not visualise them from a new perspective. It’s nauseatingly bland and too trivial to be taken seriously.
Ram is introduced as this Ranchoddas Chanchad of the gang, who practically solves any problem under the sun but still decides to be a struggling writer, scrambling notes at posh cafes, writing pages of code and drawing. Rahul and Shreya have no identity beyond being the diehard lovers. Meanwhile, Ram, his buddy Arjun and his colleague Meghana are caught in a complex love triangle.
Though we’ll come to the romance segment later, the portrayal of friendship (which should have ideally been its USP) primarily doesn’t work well. The group dynamic is too vanilla for comfort—there are barely any strong situations, highs, or lows to establish their camaraderie. For instance, what would it mean for a girl to stay with three men under the same roof?
Every aspect of the writing is so conveniently ironed out and lacks any element of nuance or detail. While it’s understandable that Rahul and Shreya’s relationship is relegated to the backseat after a point – was Meghana’s terrible flashback of her love with a GM-turned-janitor at a software firm necessary at all? Moreover, why bother giving a backstory to a janitor with no say in the story?
The situation where Arjun, Ram and Meghana take a crucial call with their relationship is hardly affecting. And for the supposedly thick friends they are, it’s difficult to comprehend why they need to part ways and stay out of touch after ‘the’ major incident. To make matters worse in the end – there’s another obnoxious idea of making a maid fall one of the members at the reunion.
There are typically heavy dialogues about the ‘epic’ friendship that stands the test of time in the climax, but what the viewer is essentially looking at is the time on his watch and moving on from the nightmare. And the next time when a show wants to tell a story about an author – it would augur well if the director genuinely reads books or understands the minds of those who write one.
Sammelanam, as the title says, is a mishmash – a yawn-inducing one.
Music and Other Departments?
While one can’t deny the team’s effort to shape this show as a musical – Yashwanth Nag’s songs are not quite memorable and lack any/little lyrical value. Saravana Vasudevan’s background score is strictly okay. On the technical front, Sravan G Kumar’s cinematography is basic but effective. As a narrative, the show has too many jerks and doesn’t care to establish the characters, subplots well.
Highlights?
None
Drawbacks?
Lacks any sense of direction/purpose
Aimless storytelling, poor writing
Devoid of novelty and has weak performances
Did I Enjoy It?
No
Will You Recommend It?
Not at all
Sammelanam OTT Series Review by M9
