There is no escaping the sinking feeling you are bound to experience while watching Kavithalayaa’s Time Enna Boss!? , a Tamil sitcom streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
What makes the experience even more dreadful is that the cast, which features several mainstream actors like Bharat Niwas, Priya Bhavani Shankar, Karunakaran and Robo Shankar to name a few, come off unstuck despite their admirable commitment to stick to character.
The show is a three-hour long facepalm marathon. It follows the story of four time travellers who are re-routed to 2019, and into the house of Bala (Bharat). Bharathi (Priya) is from 1975, Killi (Robo) is from 1000 AD Hannah (Sanjana Sarathy) is from 1895 while Buggy (Karunakaran) is from 2075.
An interesting premise? Maybe, if the show’s laughs were derived from these time travellers’ misadventures of fitting into a world that is not theirs. That said — where exactly are the laughs on this show? It is a question which the writers, led by the show’s creator Super Subu, ought to answer. Adding fake laughter makes watching the show a buggier experience than Karunakaran’s character.
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There are several pop culture references: from 7G Rainbow Colony and Hip Hop Tamizha Adhi to Salman Khan and word plays on popular brands like dead bull — ring any bell? — but all of this comes across as an incoherent mess in an incorrigible setup. The problematic state of the show’s writing and filming is best encapsulated in episode six (Shrooms), which is just a 20-minute hot mess of Robo Shankar getting high on you know what. Poor sound design and dubbing only add to the chaos.
The props, writing and presentation make Time Enna Boss!? an interesting cross between theatre and a spoof show on TV like a Lollu Sabha . Except, there is no entertainment value. Certainly nothing that will hold you to your seats for three really long hours — or 10,800 seconds, for the sake of time travel — which you could have instead spent watching paint dry!
The most profoundly funny and thought-provoking part of Time Enna Boss!? is this hidden message: at the entrance to Bala’s apartment building there is a board that proclaims ‘ Manda Bathram ’. If only we knew that it had to be taken literally...
‘Time Enna Boss!?’ is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
