A Painful Session of Secondhand Embarrassment
There is a highly telling scene in the new reality series Desi Bling that perfectly captures the essence of the entire show. Renowned chef Ranveer Brar stands in a luxury kitchen, preparing a meal for actress Tejasswi Prakash and her group of friends.
While he cooks, the women loudly dissect the private personal lives of other women who are not even in the room. Chef Ranveer stands there completely clueless, desperately hiding his sheer embarrassment behind a frozen, awkward smile.
His eyes practically scream a silent question about how his professional career arrived at this exact point. Watching it, you will instantly feel intense secondhand embarrassment for him. In fact, that is the exact emotion the audience experiences throughout the entire running time of the show.
High-Octane Cringe Lacking Real Entertainment
Desi Bling follows popular Indian television couple Karan Kundrra and Tejasswi Prakash as they dive into Dubai’s ultra-wealthy Indian expat circuit. The glittering cast features billionaire couple Satish and Tabinda Sanpal, alongside the Sajan family, which includes Rizwan, Adel, and Sana.
The lineup also features Dyuti Parruck and his wife Iryna Kinakh, high-society sisters Alizey and Lailli Mirza, and Pamela Serena.
Without a doubt, the literal bling is heavily present in every single frame. For example, Tabinda claims she owns 40 kilograms of gold and buys three additional kilograms every single year for Dhanteras.
Furthermore, her daughter received a custom pink Rolls-Royce for her very first birthday and wore a 24-carat gold dress to the celebration.
Obviously, nobody watches glamorous reality shows like this looking for intellectual depth or narrative nuance. Instead, you watch them for high-octane cringe and gloriously staged drama.
The main key performance indicator of a guilty-pleasure reality show is simple: it needs to be entertainingly awful. While Desi Bling clearly agrees to this basic premise, it unfortunately fails to understand how to be trashy in an entertaining way.
Painfully Staged Confrontations and Bad Improv
The show’s scriptwriters—and let’s not pretend this series isn’t heavily scripted—clearly did not try very hard to create believable scenarios. From the very first episode, every single confrontation feels painfully staged for the cameras.
Absolutely no one in this elite friend group can keep a secret for a single day. The exact moment one person hears a piece of gossip, they sprint directly toward the next person to reveal it.
They often do this in the middle of crowded public events with absolutely no awareness of their surroundings. Consequently, every argument feels less like actual reality and more like badly rehearsed improv theater.
A Delusional Take on Male Friendships
Perhaps the show’s most delusional attempt at displaying “reality” happens when the men gather to discuss their deepest personal struggles. During this scene, they offer each other careful, considered, and emotionally attuned advice.
As women, we know, and we have always known, that this is simply not how men operate when they share a room together. This is not true for Indian men, Dubai men, or men of any nationality and income bracket.
Men do not sit in a perfect circle and carefully counsel each other through their complex marriage problems. Instead, they talk about cricket, quickly change the subject, and order another drink. Therefore, we did not buy a single second of that forced emotional depth.
The Glaring Tejasswi Prakash Problem
Standing front and center of the show’s major problems is Tejasswi Prakash, who decides to aggressively ham her way through the entire series. In a television genre where people are supposed to pretend to be real, she stands out as a glaringly bad actor.
Her entire vibe feels like a direct throwback to her viral Naagin 6 internet meme. If her previous motto was “Walk karte hain to time nahi dekhte,” her new motto on this show is clear. It translates to: “Reality show karte hain to real nahi dikhte, confrontation karte hain to situation nahi dekhte.”
Throughout the episodes, she constantly pokes her nose into everyone’s private business. She demands instant gossip under the false guise of “concern,” and screechingly yells “SHUT UPPP!” at the end of almost every sentence.
She inserts herself freely into other people’s heated fights and personal issues. However, the moment the tables turn against her, she instantly becomes incredibly defensive, angry, and loud.
Faking It for the Production Cameras
In one notable episode, following a massive fight with Karan, she turns directly to the camera before an event. She confidently says, “I started faking so the guests wouldn’t know.”
To that comment, we can only say: girl, please. We could easily see you faking your way through the entire series, not just during that specific moment.
Furthermore, throughout the show, she and others take mean, pointed digs at Pamela for “living off her ex’s money.” Even if that claim is entirely true, it raises the obvious question of what precisely that has to do with Tejasswi. After all, she just arrived in Dubai from Mumbai and already holds loud opinions about everyone in town.
A Mind-Numbing Season Finale Proposal
The elaborate proposal sequence at the end of the season deserves a special mention for its absurdity. Tejasswi walks into a heavily production-managed outdoor setup.
Karan stands waiting under a massive floral arch while the guests stand around watching. Any typical person with a negative IQ would read this room correctly within four seconds.
Yet, Tejasswi keeps on continuously asking “what is happening, what is happening?” Her dramatic crying scene afterward genuinely makes you wonder how she earns a living as a professional actor.
To his genuine credit, Karan Kundrra maintains a quiet, admirable steadiness throughout the chaos. His wardrobe, however, appears to have been sourced entirely from a local drama company’s leftover costume inventory.
Recycled Arguments and Exhausting Marriage Drama
Next comes the endlessly exhausting marriage drama between Dyuti Parruck and Iryna Kinakh. Within just a few episodes, it becomes painfully obvious to the audience why the relationship is falling apart.
Dyuti carries a classic patriarchal mindset where parenting appears to be solely the mother’s responsibility. He constantly criticizes Iryna for going out and not being a “good mother” while conveniently ignoring his own selfish behavior.
Iryna, on the other hand, spends most of the season discussing the deep problems in her marriage without doing much to actually address them. By the season finale, viewers are simply tired of hearing the exact same arguments recycled in different luxury settings.
Unexpected Honesty from the Mean Girls
Interestingly, the people who initially come across as stereotypical “mean girls”—Pamela and the Mirza sisters—slowly emerge as some of the more emotionally honest cast members.
During Pamela’s lavish birthday party, her ex-partner gifts her an expensive Chanel bag. Pamela joyfully tells the camera: “I wanted this bag, I don’t know how he got to know this!”
However, the editors cut immediately to the ex’s solo interview, where he states: “I took her to the store, asked her to pick a gift, and she chose this.” It highly looks as if the show makers are trying way too hard to prove to us how unscripted the show is.
Promos for Properties and Tone-Deaf Banter
Meanwhile, the Sajan family—Rizwan, Adel, and Sana—remain the most subdued individuals of the lot. They never get involved in any major confrontation or messy gossip session. Instead, they appear to be on the show simply to use it as a giant, glorified billboard for Danube Properties.
Then, there are shocking things said on the show that no amount of sparkling gold can distract you from. Tabinda firmly believes a second child will successfully stop her husband from partying, and she mentions this desperate plan throughout the show.
When she brings this up, Satish responds with the kind of tone-deaf billionaire banter that makes you want to turn off your TV immediately. He remarks, “Let’s go to London, wahaan humare 70 embryo pade hain… Mera bas chale main 70 surrogate leke 70 bacche kar lun.”
Cruel Comments Behind the Camera
When Tabinda oversteps her social boundaries and tells Karan that Tejasswi isn’t the right match for him, Karan handles the situation with considerable grace and politeness. But in his solo piece to the camera afterward, his attitude changes completely.
He states, “I only take advice from people who have achieved something in life, and Binda bhabhi’s only identity is that she is Satish’s wife.”
One supposes that standing loyally by your husband through the difficult building of a massive business empire, raising a family, and opening your own independent company counts for absolutely nothing. But sure, Karan, let’s pretend she has no real achievements.
Celebrities Looking for the Nearest Exit
Finally, the various celebrity guests—including Ranveer Brar, Sania Mirza, Shilpa Shetty, Tiger Shroff, Tamannaah Bhatia, Sunny Leone, and Vivek Oberoi—each look highly uncomfortable. Every single one of them wears the exact expression of someone who has just realized the emergency exit is much further away than it initially appeared. We feel terrible for them.
Here is the ultimate truth about modern reality shows: everyone already knows they are scripted. The audience knows it, the cast knows it, and the production crew knows it.
The unwritten agreement is that everyone pretends for the cameras, and in return, the show delivers entertainment compelling enough to justify the social pretense. Unfortunately, Desi Bling cannot hold up its end of this basic bargain.
The excessive bling is definitely there. It is just not nearly blingy enough to make you forget how incredibly hard everyone is trying to act.