Dil Dosti Dilemma Review: Prime Video’s latest series is so sweet it might give you diabetes

The teenage years usually bring a raging volcano of confusing emotions, new aspirations, dilemmas, self-doubt, and more. And that’s exactly what Prime Video’s latest original series Dil Dosti Dilemma is trying to do. The series features a young girl named Asmara (Anushka Sen) as the protagonist; a typical teenage girl from an extremely wealthy family whose existence revolves around the approval of her best friends.

She wears trendy clothes, talks about fashion, loves to shop and party, and is embarrassed by any aspect of her reality that might not match the carefully crafted classy girl persona she’s built for herself. She is embarrassed by awkward gifts from her grandparents and can’t seem to share her true emotions in front of her equally pretentious friends.

When her mother realizes that Asmara may have grown into an empowered, ungrateful adult who has lost all respect for her roots, she decides to cancel her two-month trip to Canada and instead send her to her grandmother’s house in a small town. as punishment.

Revathi Pillai’s character is quite gullible in the show and has a lot of self-esteem issues

What follows is a predictable series of events in which the spoiled girl struggles to adjust to life in the small town, only to fall in love there. The show evokes stories we’ve all heard and seen many times. Don’t be too surprised if it reminds you of childhood moral stories, because it’s just as cute, if not more so. The occasional screen presence of Shruti Seth, playing Asmara’s mother in the serial, whose acting skills still seem stuck in time, might remind you of the popular 90s show Shararat, if you’re an ardent fan like me.

Although the series tries to superficially depict complex emotions experienced by teenagers, it barely gives a taste of reality. Everyone is too loving, understanding and accommodating – the series often ends up feeling like Sooraj Barjatya’s version of coming of age. It’s a world where nothing as dark as HBO’s Euphoria might exist. In this version of the world in Toyland, a teenager can easily become a torchbearer of morality, and adults not only silently follow, but indulge in frenzied celebration of the man. It’s as if the show was written by a teenager hell-bent on spreading goodness to the world.

Tanvi Azmi plays Anushka Sen’s grandmother in Dil Dosti Dilemma

The show tries to touch on teenage relationships when it shows a boy who tries to manipulate Asmara’s best friend Naina into thinking he likes her only to use her to get to her father who is famous tennis coach. Even though he pretends to be interested in her for ulterior motives and is an expert at gaslighting, the character is still treated in a sweet way.

The one thing that stood out about the show was the honesty with which it tried to show the sense of self-doubt that runs deep in the hearts of teenagers. It beautifully captures that sweet spot in adolescence where innocence and sinfulness coexist.

Anushka Sen’s character keeps lying to her friends about being in Canada while on Tibri Road

However, the series falters where it should show similar care to its other characters, portraying Hindi speakers as awkward and downright stupid. Vishakha Pandey’s heroine, for example, comes across as a boisterous fool with zero common sense just because she’s from a small town and speaks English words incorrectly. Similarly, Arjun Berry’s character is looked down upon just because he has a rich Hindi vocabulary. He and his language are only ridiculed for a few laughs, none of which feel deserved.

If you’re looking for something that treats the subject with the seriousness and attention it deserves, I’d recommend skipping this one. However, if you want something to run in the background while you finish up your pending tasks or other household chores, you can tune in to this mindless series – or maybe if you’re holding on to a delusional notion of teenage utopia where you exist happily ever after.