Single Papa: Kunal Kemmu’s Crowded Series Tries Hard To Be Funny But Forgets To Have Fun

SINGLE PAPA, the six-episode series on Netflix, is a good example of a people-pleaser that ends up pleasing no one. It takes a single-line, off-kilter premise — a man desperately wanting to have a child — and runs with it in all possible directions. In the process, it not only misses the goal post but also loses the plot. This is a travesty because helming Single Papa is Kumal Kemmu, an actor with assured comic timing.

Directed by Shashank Khaitan, Hitesh Kewalya and Neeraj Udhwani, the show centres on Gaurav Gehlot (Kemmu), a man-child who really wants to have kids. His resolve tears his marriage apart, but Gaurav remains undeterred. Things come to a head when a small baby is found in his car, seemingly abandoned. The sight evokes pent-up parental feelings in him, and his decision to adopt wreaks havoc in his conservative family.

Notwithstanding the heavy-handed treatment later, it is a sweet entry point for the series, not least because, apart from Kemmu Single Papa is studded with a cast who can make even the most absurd lines work. Manoj Pahwa is hilarious as Jatin, Gaurav’s father, who runs an alcohol store in Gurugram; his feelings are tied in such a knot that the only way he expresses them is through updating sentimental posts on social media. There is also Ayesha Raza playing Gaurav’s mother, Poonam, a God-fearing woman who really wants their daughter, Namrata (Prajakta Koli), to get married. Both Pahwa and Raza take their time with their lines, delivering them with a finesse of veterans and elevating silliness to an artform.

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While the frills work, Single Papa comes down under its own weight with the unending subplots that plague the narrative. The outline is simple: after the baby, named Amul by Gaurav, is admitted to the hospital on falling sick, he is adopted by an adoption agency. Gaurav forges a bond with him and seeks to adopt, but his plan is challenged from all fronts: his family refuses to accept, and his sister’s prospective hyperconservative in-laws scorn it. But the strongest opposition comes from Romilla (Neha Dhupia), who runs the adoption agency. Post an ill-timed encounter with Gaurav, she is convinced, not wrongly, that he isn’t equipped to father a child alone.

It becomes fairly evident from the start that Single Papa’s preoccupation will be the journey Gaurav undertakes to convince Romilla, and thereby the rest of his parenting abilities, although everything about his personality points in the opposite direction. He isn’t financially independent, nor is he emotionally mature. But he makes the effort — and that becomes not just the point of the show, but also a reminder of the need to stop assigning gender to roles.

The problem here is that Single Papa takes an eternity to get there. Granted, six episodes are not a lot, but each of them bears a similar arc where more and more confusion is stacked to the brim. His sister offers him her grudging support, but she hides this from her in-laws. Her fiancé gets tied up in the mess, a conservative-lite who shrugs off responsibility the moment the buck stops at him. In all this, to prove that he indeed can take care of Amul, Gaurav lies to Romilla that he and his sister will co-parent the child, and she will not get married. In the middle of this, a distraught Poonam is lured by a god-man whom Jatin takes to be an affair. It is a lot.

Written by Ishita Moitra and Neeraj Udhwani, Single Papa is planted in the world Moitra has been working on for a while. Gaurav is as clueless and harmless as Rocky Randhawa from Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, carrying even the kind-heartedness of someone like Akhil Chadha from Bad Newz (also a film Moitra has written). The humour is familiar, but it also starts to feel repetitive, leaning as it is almost always on puncturing orthodoxy by making wokeness the punchline.

Kemmu is a great fit for such a role, and while he is constantly watchable and carries a perpetual exhaustion on his face, the inadequacy of his ideas hurts even his portrayal. Like many shows of a similar nature in the past, Single Papa wants to be accessible first, and for that, it breaks down simple ideas to their simplistic forms and, in all the rush, forgets to take stock.

Single Papa is currently streaming on Netflix.