'Love Under Construction' Series Review: Neeraj Madhav Stars in This Neatly-Written, Passive Viewing Comedy 

Director: Vishnu G Raghav
Writer: Vishnu G Raghav
Cast: Neeraj Madhav, Gouri Kishan, Aju Varghese, Anand Manmadhan, Kiran Peethambaran, Ann Jameela Saleem
Language: Malayalam
Streaming on: JioHotstar

Writer-director Vishnu G Raghav’s Love Under Construction is the closest we’ve got in recent times to a sub-genre we may call a contemporary Sreenivasan comedy. The series is set very much in the 2020s (a calendar in the show reads 2023) but the struggles of a middle-class Malayali doesn’t seem to have changed a whole lot in the 35 years since we first met the protagonist ofTP Balagopalan MA (1989) that was written by Sreenivasan. Like Balagopalan, Vinod (Neeraj Madhav) too has one dream — to build a house for his family — and it’s this dream that has been the basis of his every life decision.

This includes his move to Dubai for work at a very early age. After being evicted from his home as a child, Vinod’s ambitions were fuelled by the trauma he felt for having been abruptly rendered homeless. With the progress of each episode in this six-part series, we also witness the slow construction of this dream home, brick by brick. Naturally, there are obstacles too in every step, most of which are internal in nature. This includes his relationship with Gouri (Gouri) and their plans to get married. This also includes his naivety, which forbids him from bribing his way to a complete house. But in the true spirit of the archetypical Sreenivasan hero, Vinod is just another man crumbling under the expectations set by his partner, friends, and family.

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But if Vinod’s character reminds you of someone like Balagopalan, then the show’s structure is a lot like another film written by Sreenivasan: Mithunam (1993). Vinod is just as helpless as the lead character of Sethu was in Mithunam, struggling to balance his business with the needs of his joint family. Caught between corrupt government officials delaying construction work and the pressures of getting married to Gouri with even stronger opposition, Love Under Contruction moves on engagingly from one life problem to another. If Sreenivasan himself were to describe Vinod’s plight, he’d have said, “Avide kalyanam, ivide paalu kaachal, (a wedding function there, a housewarming here).

A still from 'Love Under Construction'.

Even within the scope of characters and situations we’re familiar with, we find neat touches in the writing that continue to surprise. This could be something gimmicky like how every major event of the show is the result of a mobile phone falling into a toilet. Or the more introspective touch to compare an NRI like Vinod to a migrant labourer working to build Vinod’s house. It could even be the way Pappan (an excellent Aju Varghese) gets a complete character arc, even though we’re primed to believe that he’s only playing the sidekick.

This could also be something simple like the throwaway line exposing what a man like Pappan thinks about a movie like The Great Indian Kitchen. We get hints of the event that made him this person, but his transformation from bigot to gentleman happens so smoothly that we feel like we’ve been a part of his journey. Such elaborate sub-plots are surely possible only because of the six-episode format, but it’s also nice that we get so many interesting characters holding the fort even when the series is forced to move into predictable territory.

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Which is why Love Under Construction is best enjoyed as passive viewing. Even when the stakes keep getting bigger, we never feel the full weight of what Vinod is going through. At times, even when we see him run from pillar to post to sort things out, we feel that most of Vinod’s issues could have been solved with two to three phone calls. So, when we see things go from bad to worse, we feel like it’s Vinod’s fault just as much as it is the result of his ill fate.

However, even when the troubles keep mounting — for the show as well as for Vinod — we find that the performances are all equally consistent and effective. This isn’t limited to actors like Neeraj Madhav and Gouri who sell you their take on a modern NRI couple with real chemistry and soul. You also get to see a great amount of depth in the performances of actors like Anand Manmadhan, who plays Jiji, the contractor you love to hate until you learn to love him again. It’s the same with the actor who plays Vinod’s father, again a complex character so blinded by his selfishness that you wonder what made him this person.

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With familiar characters stuck in a situation a lot of us can relate to, Love Under Construction is among the rare Malayalam shows that makes use of the luxuries that come with the longer format. Instead of playing out like a movie that gets chopped into equal parts, it comes across as a modern take on the age-old problems of every middle-class man and the not-so-classy people he’s surrounded by.