Made in Heaven (TV series)

Made In Heaven
Promotional poster
Genre	Drama Romance
Created by	Zoya Akhtar Reema Kagti
Written by	Reema Kagti Zoya Akhtar Alankrita Shrivastava
Directed by	Nitya Mehra Zoya Akhtar Prashant Nair Alankrita Shrivastava
Starring	Arjun Mathur Sobhita Dhulipala Kalki Koechlin Jim Sarbh Shashank Arora Shivani Raghuvanshi
Country of origin	India
Original languages	Hindi English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	9 (list of episodes)
Production
Editor	Apurva Asrani
Running time	45-60 minutes
Production companies	Excel Entertainment Tiger Baby Films
Original release
Network	Amazon Video
Release	8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)

Made In Heaven is a 2019 Indian romantic drama web series that premiered on Amazon Video on 8 March 2019. Produced by Excel Entertainment, the series chronicles the lives of Tara and Karan, two wedding planners in Delhi running an agency named Made in Heaven. The series is Amazon Video’s fourth original fictional Indian series and stars Arjun Mathur, Sobhita Dhulipala, Jim Sarbh, Shashank Arora, Kalki Koechlin and Shivani Raghuvanshi.

Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti created the show, and they wrote it with Alankrita Shrivastava. Akhtar, Shrivastava, Nitya Mehra, and Prashant Nair served as directors for the nine-episodes of the first season. Work on the second season was to begin in April 2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The second season of the show started filming on 2 March 2021 & filming was wrapped in July 2021.

Plot

Made in Heaven portrays today’s India as a blend of old and new, where tradition and modern aspirations are at loggerheads. The show and protagonists' narratives play out against the backdrop of lavish and expensive weddings.

Cast

Main

• Sobhita Dhulipala as Tara Khanna
• Arjun Mathur as Karan Mehra
• Kalki Koechlin as Faiza Naqvi
• Jim Sarbh as Adil Khanna
• Shashank Arora as Kabir Basrai
• Shivani Raghuvanshi as Jaspreet "Jazz" Kaur

Recurring

• Neel Madhav as Arjun Mehra
• Vijay Raaz as Jauhari
• Zachary Coffin as Adam
• Natasha Singh as Shibani Bagchi
• Vinay Pathak as Ramesh Gupta
• Dalip Tahil as Kishore Khanna
• Yashaswini Dayama as Mitali Gupta
• Manini Mishra as Vimala Singh
• Ayesha Raza Mishra as Renu Gupta
• Suchitra Pillai as Mani Pandey
• Denzil Smith as Mr Swarup
• Lushin Dubey as Sheila Naqvi
• Saket Sharma as young Karan
• Shalva Kinjawadekar as young Nawab
• Siddharth Bhardwaj as Inspector Chauhan
• Ankur Rathee as Sam
• Sahidur Rahaman as Nadeem Mechanic

Guest

• Deepti Naval as Gayatri Mathur
• Aman Bhagat as Rahul Mathur
• Rahul Vohra as Bijoy Chatterjee
• Purnendu Bhattacharya as Raghvendra Roshan
• Neena Gupta as Veenu Roshan
• Pavail Gulati as Angad Roshan
• Aditi Joshi as Aliya Saxena
• Pulkit Samrat as Sarfaraz Khan
• Manjot Singh as Joginder Sethi
• Dalai as Harsimran Mann
• Ravish Desai as Vishal Shrivastava
• Shweta Tripathi as Priyanka Mishra
• Preetika Chawla as Geetanjali Sinha
• Shishir Sharma as Mr. Sinha
• Dhairya Karwa as Samar Ranawat
• Rajnish Jaiswal as Jeet Gill
• Yaaneea Bharadwaj as Sukhmani Sadana
• Tanmay Dhamania as Nikhil Swarup
• Amrita Puri as Devyani Singh
• Maanvi Gagroo as Tarana Ali
• Vijay Gupta as Khalil Ansari
• Trisha Kale as Asma Ansari
• Anhad Singh as Utsav
• Rasika Dugal as Nutan Yadav
• Siddharth Menon as John Matthew
• Vikrant Massey as Nawab Khan
• Anjum Sharma as Vishal Singh
• Aakriti Sharma as Mira

Episodes

No.	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original release date
1	"All That Glitters Is Gold"	Zoya Akhtar	Alankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti	8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Tara Khanna and Karan Mehra are the co-owners of Made In Heaven, a wedding planning agency in south Delhi. Tara is married to Adil Khanna, the heir to a wealthy family of industrialists, but is ambitious about running her own business despite already living in wealth. Karan, on the other hand, struggles financially, and is a closeted homosexual. Karan and Tara outcompete a rival wedding planning agency, Harmony, in arranging the wedding of Angad Roshan, heir to the powerful Roshan dynasty. However, Angad's parents do not trust his fiancée Aliya, and have Tara and Karan perform a background check on her; they discourage Angad from marrying Aliya after learning she is not a virgin and once had an abortion. Karan convinces Angad to lie to his parents that the child was his own, but Aliya is incensed that Angad must lie about her past to his family and walks out on him during a prenuptial ceremony. Tara later convinces Aliya to reconcile with Angad, suggesting that she will become financially destitute if she derails her marriage. The two of them ultimately marry.
2	"Star Struck Lovers"	Zoya Akhtar	Alankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti	8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Things get ugly when the film star Sarfaraz Khan kisses the bride Harsimran at one of the wedding events. The groom Joginder is livid and attempts to break into Khan's hotel room to attack him. Joginder’s parents eventually step in to defuse the situation. Tara and Karan then find out that Harsimran also slept with Khan that night. However, they are able to delete evidence of the affair from the hotel cameras before anyone else can find out. Jazz, a young Made In Heaven employee who Karan has taken under his wing, gets into trouble for sharing pictures from the wedding on her Facebook page, but she makes up for it by helping Joginder and Harsimran make up. Tara convinces Harsimran to pray at Joginder’s gurudwara and cook prasad for him. They eventually reconcile and the wedding successfully goes through. Meanwhile, Tara suspects Adil of having an affair. She confides in her best friend Faiza, who dismisses her concerns as paranoia. However, Adil is later revelaed to be having an affair with Faiza.
3	"It's Never Too Late"	Nitya Mehra	Alankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti	8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Tara and Karan organize the wedding of an elderly couple, Gayatri Mathur and Bijoy Chatterjee. Gayatri's children disapprove of the marriage and initially refuse to attend the wedding, but Karan eventually convinces them otherwise. Much to his horror Karan finds out that Utsav, a man whom he ditched after a one night stand, is now engaged to his former classmate, Bubbles. Utsav tries to convince Karan to sleep with him but Karan refuses. Karan decides to tell Bubbles the truth about Utsav, and she requests that he keep it between them. Flashbacks reveal Tara’s lower-middle-class background before she married into the Khanna family. Karan tells a friend, Sam, about his previous business venture which failed, prompting his mother to force his father into financially rescuing him; he then borrowed money from the street to start Made in Heaven and is currently paying off heavy debt. Adil and Faiza take a weekend getaway, but get into a car crash on the way home.
4	"The Price of Love"	Nitya Mehra	Alankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti	8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Tara finds out about Adil's affair when he and Faiza are hospitalized after their car accident. Nevertheless, she agrees to donate blood to Faiza, whose condition is critical at the time. Tara and Karan lose the contract for Bubbles’ wedding when she decides to go with another company. The financial strain forces Karan to agree to organizing a wedding in Ludhiana for a friend. Meanwhile, Made in Heaven plans the wedding of IAS officer Vishal and his fiancée Priyanka. On the day of the wedding, Vishal's seemingly progressive parents demand a huge dowry and threaten to cancel the wedding if refused; Priyanka comes to find out that Vishal had covertly agreed to the plan, and walks out of the wedding. Tara confronts Adil about his affair. He apologizes and promises to make things right, but she rebuffs him. Jazz uses the her company credit card to buy fancy clothes for herself. She plans to return them, but Karan fires her after Shibani, an employee who resents being underpaid for her skills and effort, reports the theft to him. Shibani is later offered an interview with Harmony. Karan hooks up with someone he meets at a bar. Unbeknown to him, his landlord has installed a camera in his room and secretly watches them make love.
5	"A Marriage of Convenience"	Prashant Nair	Alankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti	8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Made in Heaven organizes a wedding in Ludhinana for an NRI groom who holds a contest to choose a local bride. The bride finds out that the groom is impotent on their wedding night. Afraid of the stigma associated with the dissolution of marriage, she decides to move to America anyway. Jazz’s drug addict brother steals money and jewelry from their mother and disappears. Jazz eventually finds him and brings him home. Karan’s landlord’s wife finds videos of Karan on her husband’s laptop. He tells her he was gathering evidence to file a police report when she confronts him. Karan is arrested at the end of the episode.
6	"Something Old, Something New"	Prashant Nair	Alankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti	8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Karan spends a couple of nights in prison where he is sexually assaulted by a police officer. Tara eventually manages to bail him out. He decides to move back to his rented place and sue the landlord. Made In Heaven arranges the wedding of Gitanjali, a banker and Wharton graduate with Nikhil, an NRI doctor. An astrologer claims that Gitanjali is mangalik and must marry a tree first to defuse any ill luck. Gitanjali agrees but Nikhil freaks out when she tells him. He reasons with Gitanjali and she pretends to agree with him. Later she goes through with the tree marriage ceremony behind his back. Shibani leaves the company and joins Harmony Weddings. Adil undergoes some medical tests and learns that he has a low sperm count. Tara convinces him to take the supplements prescribed by the doctor. He visits Faiza but she tells him that she cannot be with him. Tara has been ignoring Faiza’s calls. She eventually goes to her house and trashes the place in anger. Karan’s landlord apologizes to him and reveals that he too is gay and has been hiding it all his life.
7	"A Royal Affair"	Nitya Mehra	Alankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti	8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Adil confronts Tara about the showdown at Faiza's house before storming off in anger. Made In Heaven next organizes the marriage of Devyani Singh, an Indian Air Force pilot, with Samar, the son of the rich and royal Mr. Ranawat. Tara briefly reflects on her jealousy towards Adil's ex-fiancée Natasha, while Karan decides to withdraw the case against his landlord for the sake of the latter's daughter, who Karan is friends with. During the wedding, Jazz, who rejoins Made In Heaven after apologizing to Karan, unwittingly gets him and Tara to discover that Mr. Ranawat sexually assaulted a henna designer, Pooja, who is petrified about her trauma. Devyani meets Pooja at the Made In Heaven office and offers her two lakhs to silence the matter, when Pooja demands five lakhs, causing Devyani to close the deal and leave; unable to bear this and the realization that she carried the threat to file a case for money, Karan loses his temper on Pooja, causing a heated argument between him and Tara when Pooja walks out. A flashback reveals that Adil and Tara had sex in his office, but as the CCTV footage of the embarrassing moment went viral, Adil's father offered Tara the same amount that Pooja had demanded, in exchange for clearing his son's name. While the wedding happens in peace, a journalist, Pavleen, who is Karan's friend, exposes the secret of the molestation during a press conference called for the announcement of a merger with a foreign luxury hotel brand, galvanizing the rest of the press. Kabir and Jazz share an intimate moment on the night of the wedding, while Karan decides to file a PIL against Article 377 immediately after his return.
8	"Pride and Bridezilla"	Alankrita Shrivastava	Alankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti	8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Made In Heaven organizes the wedding of Tarana Ali, the daughter of an army officer, while Tara decides to take up the cause for her assistant Khalil's daughter Asma's wedding with Subodh, a fellow chartered accountant at Asma's workplace. Karan finds Sam surprisingly at his doorstep, and they together reflect on the nightmare he suffered. A flashback reveals that Adil's engagement with Natasha was called off. While shooting for a music video, which she proposed, Kabir has an altercation with Tarana after she chastises Jazz; he tries to console Jazz, but she responds by telling her that he isn't fit for her. Asma's wedding soon takes place, with Tara and Karan in attendance. Meanwhile, the duo arrange for a meeting between Adil and Ramesh Jauhari, a silent partner and Karan's former loan shark. Karan soon confronts Kabir about the music video fiasco, revealing that Tarana's family is livid about the altercation, and the wedding has been called off. Tara, meanwhile, visits her family and grooming academy in Old Delhi, as she regains her lost sense of identity.
9	"The Great Escape"	Alankrita Shrivastava	Alankrita Shrivastava, Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti	8 March 2019 (2019-03-08)
Karan and Tara work on the wedding of two major warring political parties, the Singhs and the Yadavs, looking to consolidate their power through a marriage between the son, Vishal Singh and daughter, Nutan Yadav. Unfortunately for them, Nutan is already in love with John Matthew, an engineer of Christian background, whom she has been in a relationship with for several years since her college days. Out of fear of her dominating parents, she relents to this political marriage. However, once Karan and Tara learn about her situation through Kabir, they decide to help her escape from this forced relationship. Additionally, they learn that Nutan's elder sister was killed by her own parents with a pretense of suicide as her sister defied her parents in loving a man they didn't approve of, who was killed by them. With elaborate planning, they remove Nutan from her fortified house the day before marriage. She ends up marrying John in a church and tells the media that if she or her husband die, blame lies on her parents for conspiring against them. Meanwhile, both Karan and Tara face their own personal struggles and attempt to resolve them : as for Karan, he confronts his own ghosts of hiding his homosexuality when he gets a Facebook message from his schoolmate Nawab supporting his fight for LGBTQ equality. Viewers are shown in a flashback about how Karan denies his homosexuality when Nawab's written love note for Karan is mocked at by his classmates during a locker room meet. When Karan is confronted by his friends, he states that Nawab is trying to impose his homosexuality on him and then leads a homophobic attack on Nawab, terrorizing him. This causes Nawab to leave school with Karan guilt ridden for being the aggressor against him. Bringing this memory to light, Karan meets up with Nawab, who is now married. Karan apologizes to Nawab and then two engage in a passionate night of sexual intercourse that never materialized when they were teenagers with mutual affection. Karan shares his emotional vulnerability with him and tells Nawab that he is his first true love. Nawab forgives him and the two continue to bond. Tara, in the meantime, participates in an intimate small dinner party with her husband and in-laws. During the dinner, Adil continues to get repeated phone calls from Faiza, that he eventually picks up. Upon his return, Tara publicly confronts him about this and then privately both fight about their broken relationship. Tara laments her relationship with him and regrets having a deceitful start to their relationship. A flashback reveals that Tara intentionally engaged in sex with Adil in his office to have it recorded, stealthily stole the recording and leaked him, using it as a means to get closer to Adil, break his engagement and allow herself to enter his rich lifestyle by being his wife. With this broken relationship, she realizes that she is paying the sins of breaking his previous relationship. With deep remorse and shame, Tara leaves the mansion and meets up with Karan in their office. They discover that it has been vandalized by extremist right-wing groups wanting to wage war against Karan for his stand on homosexuality. Both Karan and Tara laugh at their tragedy and feel satisfied that they can re-start their new lives with the expensive jewelry that Tara brought along with her, as the show ends on a note describing how Article 377 was later repealed on grounds on being unconstitutional, an action which was considered a landmark judgment in the history of the Indian LGBTQ community.

Promotion and release

The official trailer of the web series was released on 15 February 2019. The web series released on 8 March 2019 on Prime Video.

Reception

The show has received largely positive reviews with several critics and online reviews praising the series' dark take on the Big Fat Indian Wedding. Soumya Srivastava of Hindustan Times gave Made In Heaven four stars out of five, terming it the best desi original by Amazon Prime. Srivastava opines that Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti’s new show will keep you hooked.

Sanjukta Sharma of Scroll.in praised the performances, writing, "...performances, especially by Mathur and Dhulipala, engagingly and steadfastly chart a convincing trajectory of early struggles, promise, dysfunction, despair and uplifting resignation. The show's costumes received major acclaim as well with fashion critic, Shivani Yadav doing a complete episode-by-episode analysis on her blog Critic Corner."

Ektaa Malik from The Indian Express stated the series works because all the characters, big and small, have their development curve etched well. The strong performances make each episode stand out.

Awards & Nominations

Year	Award	Category	Nominee(s)	Result	Ref.
2019	iReel Awards	Best Drama Series	Made In Heaven	Nominated
		Best Actor -Drama	Arjun Mathur	Nominated
		Best Actress -Drama	Sobhita Dhulipala	Nominated
		Best Supporting Actor	Jim Sarbh	Nominated
		Best Supporting Actress	Shivani Raghuvanshi	Nominated
		Best Writing -Drama	Reema Kagti, Zoya Akhtar & Alankrita Shrivastava	Nominated
		Best Music	Made In Heaven	Nominated
2020	International Emmy Awards	Best Actor	Arjun Mathur	Nominated

Soundtrack

Made in Heaven
Soundtrack album by Sagar Desai, Dub Sharma, Balkrishan Sharma and Sherry Mathews
Released	1 March 2019
Recorded	2018
Genre	Prime Original Tv Series Soundtrack
Length	16:31
Language	Hindi
Label	Sony Music for Amazon Music
External audio Made in Heaven Album on Amazon Music

The music is composed by Sagar Desai, Dub Sharma, Balkrishan Sharma and Sherry Mathews. Songs are rendered by Rituraj, Farad Bhiwandiwala and Viba Saraf. Qawwali "Aye re sakhi more piya ghar aaye" is rendered by Nizami Brothers and chorus "Perfect Love" by Aadya Jaswal, Avika Diwan and Mehak Sanghera. Lyrics for "Jiya Jaye" and "Musafir" have been written by Amanda Sodhi.

Track listing

No.	Title	Singer(s)	Length
1.	"Aa Re Sakhi More Piya Ghar Aaye"	M S Nizami Brothers	6:19
2.	"Jiya jaye"	Rituraj Mohanty	2:17
3.	"Musafir"	Farad Bhiwandiwala	1:11
4.	"Baarat Company"	Rituraj	1:57
5.	"Roshay"	Viba Saraf	2:22
6.	"Perfect Love"	Aadya Jaswal, Avika Diwan and Mehak Sanghera	2:25
Total length:			16:31

External links

• Made in Heaven at IMDb