Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya Review: No Cliffhangers Or Pay-Offs But This Kay Kay Menon Show Is A Wholesome Watch

Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya Web Series Review: Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya comes at a rather important moment. It sheds light on politics, emotions and education within the walls of a public school. But don’t mistake it for a high-stakes narrative attempting to make a hard-hitting statement on the system. What creator Biswapati Sarkar instead does is opt for a breezy and happy-go-lucky treatment.

And it works. The intent, the storytelling, the quirky characters – almost all of it works. There’s no room for nuance here. The linearity may even appear to be monotonous. There are no peak dramatic points, no real cliffhangers and no rich pay-offs. But again, all of it comes together to work beautifully. Ultimately, what you end up with is a wholesome entertainer

that’s all heart.

Set in the fictional locality of Tinki Toli on the outskirts of Delhi, the series unravels in a government school called Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya. It opens with two people from the education directorate visiting the school for an inspection. They learn that it’s currently shut as the local MLA Goldie’s guests, who’ve arrived in Tinki Toli for a wedding, have stationed themselves in the classrooms.

The tone is set right from the very first sequence. You know that you’re in for the laughs, not the ones that can shake up the walls of your room but more like little chuckles. Headmaster Gyaneshwar Tripathi, who’s also the history teacher, spends most of his time playing cricket with his students. The other teachers are as laidback as him.

There’s the ghoonghat-clad, shy and coy Sharma, who has a tough time teaching the human reproductive system to her students. There’s the goofy Shiney, Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya’s English teacher. And then there’s the most interesting of all – Hindi teacher Meena. He’s stern, old-school, and wields both a formidable Sanskritised vocabulary and a cane with equal enthusiasm.

He constantly locks horns with Kanchan, the Physics-Maths teacher. She believes in a gentler approach while dealing with students. While some students love her, most of them don’t take her seriously. Echoing her sentiments and ideology is Mukul, the in-house counsellor, whose therapy tricks fall flat before his own daughter.

This is a school most of us will have a tough time wrapping our heads around. It’s dysfunctional and perennially underperforming. Academic excellence isn’t a part of conversations, and students often seem more interested in the midday meal dessert than anything else. What adds to the chaos is Goldie and her party worker Urmila, who shares a past with Gyaneshwar.

And then, one day, Gyaneshwar’s attempt at winning a fully sponsored Cambridge trip sparks a chaotic makeover attempt, forcing a ragtag team of teachers to fix the broken system, one blackboard lesson at a time. But that’s no cakewalk. Gyaneshwar has to constantly spar with Urmila for the most basic things such as a water filter.

But there’s more to this seven-episode series than just this. The makers give us a glimpse into the personal lives of these characters as well. While Mukul is having a hard time speaking to his daughter and understanding her, especially after the demise of his wife, when he decides to give love another shot, Gyaneshwar is constantly under the guilt of not being able to give his wife a better, richer life.

Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya almost wins because of its writing team – Biswapati, Akshay Asthana, Nupur Pai, Tatsat Pandey and Meghna Srivastava. They sprinkle each scene with dollops of humour. The one-liners, no matter how silly they are, evoke laughter. Interestingly, the gags are rooted in character quirks and hardly ever feel like manufactured punchlines.

And even amid the humour, the makers make sure that they convey something important. There are themes pertaining to gentle teaching that beats pressure and fear versus tough teaching that brings about firm discipline, and the need for sex education and dispelling the taboo around it. Healthy parent-child relationships, fluid gender roles and therapy are also brought under the spotlight.

These social commentaries emerge organically from the narrative, never feeling forced, didactic, or shoehorned in for effect. The fact that it’s seamlessly woven into the show’s comic fabric is what works particularly well. There’s also a refreshing absence of cynicism to it. It finds drama in the quiet goodness of ordinary people – in all their glorious eccentricities – trying to do the right thing.

Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya is all about its moments – those that may appear bizarre but are true to the essence of middle-class Delhi. There’s Sharma who wants a leave to record a vlog for her mother-in-law’s birthday. Episodes later, she catches them engaging in PDA at a public garden. Then there’s a student who wants to keep the pressure of studies at bay and marry her Dance India Dance-obsessed boyfriend.

And when, due to budgetary issues, kheer is struck off from their midday meals, students almost begin an uprising in school. Additionally, Gyaneshwar’s self-inflicted embarrassment in front of Goldie, Urmila and others often leads to bizarre consequences. These sequences are genuinely funny. But that’s not to say that Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya doesn’t come with its loopholes.

Halfway through the series, the English teacher suddenly gets diagnosed with dyslexia. It seems like an unsuccessful and contrived attempt at bringing more laughs and preventing him from getting overshadowed by the rest of the characters. At the same time, it starts feeling overlong. Lack of nuance isn’t the issue here, but a thin, straight arc of a few characters is.

A lot of time also gets wasted in establishing the character of Goldie, which doesn’t really add anything of value to the narrative. The animated montage that serves as a flashback sequence of his family history sticks out like a sore thumb and is visually jarring to say the least. And in giving screen time to everyone else, Goldie and Urmila end up with a threadbare character sketch.

Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya is anchored by Kay Kay Menon, who plays Gyaneshwar. It’s a refreshing break from the intense, grey characters he’s largely associated with. He has impeccable, unpredictable comic timing, and that helps elevate a scene several notches higher. Even as an endearing and doting husband, his performance feels heartfelt.

He shares an unconventional cat-and-mouse dynamic with Archana Puran Singh’s Urmila. But this is a character that perhaps remains the most undercooked. An MLA’s subordinate’s looming presence in the school remains inexplicable. She hardly gets any punchlines. The performance suffers less from Archana’s abilities and more from a part that lacks texture and colour.

Deven Bhojani as Goldie is no Dushyant (from Sarabhai vs Sarabhai). He gets the shorter end of the stick here. For an actor of his calibre and comic timing, he hardly gets to display his chops and gets relegated to the periphery. But the rest of the cast – Prasanna Bisht, Abhimanyu Singh, Naveen Kasturia, Ajitesh Gupta and Annapurna Soni – is stupendous.

This ensemble emerges as the series’ strongest links, injecting it with warmth, chaos and much of its comic energy. Biswapati also makes a riotous cameo appearance. In many ways, his character of a TRP-hungry journalist seems like an extension of the hilarious parody of a certain news anchor that brought him popularity.

All in all, Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya is a hearty entertainer that’s all about its modest ambitions, heartfelt storytelling and rare authenticity. Its charm lies in its unassuming nature. It doesn’t strain to be profound and edgy. Instead, it embraces the beauty of ordinary lives, who only hold goodness in their hearts, and their simple emotions, and therein lies its emotional resonance.