Girlfriend Chor (MX Player, Dice Creator Studio 5 Episodes)

Starring: Shishir Mishra, Sonali Sachdev, Mayur More, Diksha Juneja

Rating:*** 1/2 (three and a half stars)

When it’s not busy being over-cute, this 5-episode series about a young lovelorn but loveless chap finding his romantic bearings with some help from his ‘cool’ Dad, is reasonably enjoyable, provided you aren’t looking for any depth or dimensions in your confined entertainment.

It also helps that there are some competent actors playing senior roles. The underrated Shishir Mishra, who is always a pleasure to watch, here plays the ‘cool’ Dad without trying to act cool. There is a pleasant naturalness, a healthy curiosity, to the patriarch’s concern about his son’s love life. Why does the boy Akaash always fall for a girl whose attention is elsewhere? Does he suffer from the Devdas syndrome?

No one actually mentions Devdas. This is not the place for any literary allusions.

In one of the early episodes Dad and Mom (Sonali Sachdev) attend a youngsters’ party to try and hook up their son. It’s a hilarious situation freed of the generation-related exaggerations that could have ruined the balance of the sequence.

This party sequence is my favourite moment in a series that contains an abundance of awkward courtship , not all of it has to do with the demands of the scenes. Some of the more gauche moments between Akaash (Mayur More) and Ritu (Diksha Juneja) have to do with the inexperience of the actors rather than the characters they play.

The plot spreads itself out into a bearable 5 episodes, at the end of which Akaash has gravitated away from the girl who has walked away with a more trendy (and wealthy) dude close to the girl next door who wears spectacles just in case you miss the point of her wholesomeness.

Nice Jughead, Betty, Veronica , Reggie kind of quadrangle here. And it’s nice to see the rich spoilt boy not being demonized. Do stick around till the last episode where there is an unexpected surprise in the form of Ashish Vidyarthi with whom Akaash’s Mom and Dad have some unfinished business.

The writing is light to the touch and the direction is airy, bouncy. But a second season? There is a hint of it at the end of the first season. Thanks, but no thanks.