“It takes 43 muscles to frown and only 17 to smile” – Humorously Yours, yet another content-specific series from the content-oriented TVF, is all about trying to prove this age-old aphorism right. The series is essentially about the behind-the- curtain life of a stand-up comedian, Vipul Goyal (who plays himself), his struggles, his failures and his attempts at getting a break in the long run, pretty much justifying their tagline – “the drama behind the comedy”. Produced by Arunabh Kumar, the founder of TVF who brought us the killer series like Pitchers, Permanent Roommates & Tripling, Humorously Yours is the brain-child of Vipul Goyal, Anant Singh, Amit Golani & Anandeshwar Dwivedi, meticulously directed by Amit Golani. Primary cast includes, the unpretentious Vipul Goyal, the very candid Rasika Dugal who plays Vipul’s wife Kavya and Abhishek Banerjee who plays Vipul’s only friend, the clumsy Bhushi. The best thing about the series is that the drama is not intense. Vipul’s pathetic attempts at faking the persona of a successful comedian by impersonating a fictitious manager, his constant drive to prove his husband-ly capabilities to his wife all make the episodes a light, yet, interesting watch. The chemistry between Vipul and Rasika is sizzling and would make us wonder where Rasika was hiding her sex appeal all this time. The intermittent appearances of popular stand-up comedians such as Zakir Khan, Tanmay Bhat (of All India Bakchod fame) and Sapan Verma, is a laughter treat. Vipul himelf delivers his bit of intelligent comedy which makes our time worth watching it. The third episode has been by far, the best. It takes us right into the first failure in Vipul’s life wherein he is misinformed about the audience present at an event. Being a comedian who delivers youth-centric jokes, Vipul is left high and dry in front of pot-bellied average-minded uncles and aunties whose sense of humor is next to zilch. Enters Kavya to cheer Vipul up and boy O boy…that is some real piece of husband-wife chemistry there. But though this could very well be a coveted series, it’s not without flaws. Had the makers stuck to just the ‘drama’ behind the comedy it would have been just awesome however, they decided to project the ‘comedy’ behind the ‘drama’ behind the comedy. As such that comedy just hovers over our heads. The humor, though intelligent, is delivered so fast, that we are not at times given the time to taste, digest or enjoy it, before the next punch is laid. Pacing, to be precise, is at fault. Since it’s the life of a standup comedian, the comedy shown is also of the same scope, something we would enjoy in a live show, where there are hundreds of people to join you in the laughter. But the impact of the same is greatly reduced, when one watches it on a laptop or a smart phone, alone. One would tend to analyze the humor rather than enjoy it. The biggest setback is that the last two episodes are exclusively streamed on TVF Play’s website which doesn’t make any sense. Why would anybody want to leave the smooth youtube interface and end up buffering the episodes at their still-sluggish website? One would fail to understand the logic behind it, other than the obvious one, which is to collect user data.
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