Season 46 - Indian Summers Series 2 (2016)
I have always loved epic stories set in India. Indian Summers tapped into that on many levels. Set during the waning days of the British Raj, there's a sense that the party was winding down and these characters were grasping for whatever they could get, leading them to, more often than not, make disastrous choices. The show has very little in the way of plot other than lots of romantic obstacles, but the stellar cast makes up for any plot defects. Come one people, Julia Walters! Not to mention Patrick Malahide, Nikesh Patel, Art Malik, Blake Ritson, and Craig Parkinson. I could just watch them wander the lanes between their precious club and their homes for hours on end. The insufferable heat they were trying to escape by summering in Simla, in the foothills of the Himalayas, is palpable onscreen and made me feel like I was there. I know there are a lot of people who took issue with the show, primarily due to the fact that instead of actually filming in India they filmed in Penang, Malaysia, and, well, you can tell, but it still succeeded in creating that atmosphere of suffocating and insufferable British superiority where they refuse to dress for the climate because that wouldn't be British. I can even see them sitting around set declaring themselves to be in India when they were not. I do wish the show had been given a chance to play out over the intended five seasons, because they started moving more into the political upheavals that were on the horizon in India with Gandhi and contrasting his power with that of the Raj with the introduction of Art Malik as the Maharajah of Amritpur in season two. A change was in the wind and the cracks really started to show in season two and then it just ended! And what about the romance between Alice and Aafrin! The series ends with a potential happy ending for the mixed race couple, but would that have actually lasted if the show went on for three more seasons? Or did they shoehorn this in to give the audience some kind of happy ending even though anyone who has any sense of history would know how hard the life they chose would be in 1935. Also would the show have tackled World War II? But I have to settle with what we got, a slice of life, not perfect, but very atmospheric.
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