Oscar-nominated director Smriti Mundhra pitched Indian Matchmaking to a production company ten years ago, only to be rejected due to the show's lack of white cast members. As the latest addition to Netflix's line of dating shows, Indian Matchmaking has upheld the streamer's reputation for providing addictive, yet refreshing reality TV. 2020 has undoubtedly become a year to remember, thanks to the pandemic and protests, but it will also be remembered as the year Netflix took the reality programming crown.
Love is Blind, The Circle, and Too Hot to Handle each tackled the familiar dating show format in an inventive way, and Mundhra's eight-part series is just as fresh as its predecessors. Similar to Lifetime's Married at First Sight, Indian Matchmaking presents the struggles of arranged marriage, but with a traditional Indian twist. The series follows "Mumbai's finest matchmaker," Sima Taparia, as she curates marital picks for singles in India and the U.S. These singles want to settle down. Critics and viewers have expressed mixed opinions about the series, but it's yet to be criticized for the reason it was rejected a decade ago.
Mundhra told Jezebel that she first went around town to pitch her series after meeting matchmaker Sima roughly a decade ago. During a meeting with a potential development partner, she was told that the show wouldn't sell with its intended Indian cast. "Well, it could maybe work if you have a white person who she match-makes and you follow that journey through the lens of a white person," the producer told her. Rightfully finding this response preposterous, Mundhra waited until the TV landscape evolved into a more accepting and inclusive space for storytelling.
Indian Matchmaking is Netflix's first dating series comprised of a predominantly (in this case fully) minority cast. Dating reality series, especially those focused on romance, have notorious histories when it comes to poor showings of diversity. This section of the Hollywood industry has moved along slower in terms of increasing diversity than the scripted world. For example, The Bachelor didn't cast a Black lead until this year, for season 25.
As a show with both racial and global diversity irreversibly woven into its premise, Indian Matchmaking continues Netflix's trend of debuting reality series for the global, and not just American, audience. Arranged marriage's place in the reality space has been monopolized by Married at First Sight, a show that never fails to mention how radical and nontraditional the process is. The truth is that arranged marriage is extremely traditional in cultures all over the world.
Instead of pushing the inflammatory rhetoric of how Indian arranged marriages can be forceful and unhappy affairs, Mundhra sought to take control of her people's narrative by demonstrating how arranged marriage actually works for today's generation. Without the often-detrimental overlay of reality sensationalization, Indian Matchmaking introduces a new, and at the same time ancient realm of dating to the Netflix lineup— an introduction that could not have been possible with a white lead.
Source: Jezebel