Dr. Arora

Dr. Arora : Gupt Rog Visheshagya (2022) : Series Review -

SonyLIV's latest web series Dr. Arora : Gupt Rog Visheshagya is like a sex comedy but more of sex diagnosis session. You see, sex diseases are still taboo in most of the states in India, especially the rural areas. Dr. Arora is inclined towards that zone, where having a sex issues makes your reputation go lower than a prostitute. The web series is funny, with adult jokes, of course as well as very keen about detailing of the main subject, Gupt Rog. However, it is dragged down by the typical outdated love story and melodrama which we have left way behind in Black & White era. The attempt is praiseworthy but misfires at the last stage when it was supposed to gun at its aim steadily.

Set in Central India, Dr. Arora Gupt Rog Visheshagya follows the life of a gupt rog specialist, Dr. Arora (Kumud Mishra). The series follows multiple narratives built by several characters across age, gender, and social standing coming to the protagonist. Basically, Dr Arora is an honest sexologist, who wants to cure his patients and nothing else. However, he has a past that sounds good in the beginning and almost till the end. But then fate strikes its sword, with the same old melodrama and childish love story, to spoil the entire narrative and structure of the protagonist's character. Arora is not an expert in sexology by choice, but by chance. The writing stumbles just before reaching its destination and as we say, "All well if the End is well," here it's the End that's Unwell!

Talking about screenplay, Dr. Arora has a long runtime but never bores you for the first 7 episodes. The last, 8th episode, however, goes against its nature and you feel like having played a game so efficiently only to lose the match in the last over. Let's just look at a few faults (Beware, it might cause a few spoilers). Dr. Arora's past trauma seems accurate when we look at his current profession and the reasons why he actually came to do this awkward job. In the end you realise that he wasn't here by choice, but by obsession which makes no sense at all. His lost wife is nothing less than a prostitute, yet he has love left for her. The wife, on the other hand, has no morals, no ethics when it comes to having a sex. She even accepts being a sex toy of many men, and yet our hero, Dr. Arora has a place left for her in his heart. Dr. Arora's plan of revenge sucks big time. Even those. I mean, come on, even those 70s Hollywood films had better revenge stories for R Rated films. Just like these two, every single patient of Dr. Arora has some blunders in his/her character. Take Gaurav Parajuli and Shruti Das' characters for instance. A young boy is mad about a married woman when he is an eligible bachelor himself, with one young girl hanging around him. The married woman (Shruti Das), is all about sexual desires with her words and expressions whenever she meets or talks with Devendar (Gaurav), and yet she has no intentions of having a relationship or affair with him. Wow, what a beautiful bond it was between so-called Bhabhi and Devar. Immature, that's what it is. The same applies to every character that comes for counselling to Dr. Arora, making the entire constructive image of the narrative look bad.

Coming to the positives, the web series is damn funny and on point with details of the characters and their issues. Dr. Arora uses all those taboo words without any hesitation, he does everything that any sexologist would do behind the close doors of his clinic, and the characters are also well settled with the sex issues. Dr. Arora Gupt Rog Visheshagya has a dozen of 'WOW' moments that you haven't witnessed in any taboo breaking films/series till date. It has some brilliant scenes referring to our real life, implanting exactly the same issues and situations any of us face in daily life. One more good point to look out for is, the series has all the female characters in their traditional attire, without any skin exposure, and yet all of them look attractive. Interestingly, all the men/boys are shown either little dull, weak or ugly, to make that sex issue look physically visible. You don't even need any verbal confirmation about the problem, you just look at the coulples - an attractive lady and mild looking man, and you know what their actual problems are. The humour is hilarious and is meant to make you laugh, no matter what your age. But beware, don't watch it with your family. It's an out-and-out adult fun riot for adults only.

Performances of all the actors are fine and that makes Dr. Arora very much of a watchable show. Kumud Mishra leads the way, not just as a character but as an actor to. The other pivotal roles by Raj Arjun, Gaurav Parajuli, Vidya Malvade, Vivek Mushran, Sandeepa Dhar, Shekhar Suman, Shakti Kumar, Ajitesh Gupta, Chitra Banerjee, Sam Mohan, Het Thakkar, Pitobhash, Vivek Kumar, Shreedhar Dubey, Apurva Singh, Anushka Luhar, Mithilesh Chaturvedi, Akash Pandey, Aditya Pandey, Siya Mahajan, Deepak Dutta and Satyakam Anand have done an honest and realistic job with their roles.

Sajid Ali and Archit Kumar have done fairly well as directors. It's not really their mistake of the writing has drowned the series after floating steadily for 7 long episode. Sajid and Archit go berserk about the unutterableness of the subject. The words and situations we can't describe or talk about openly, or even with our closed ones, are spoken without grabbles. Dr. Arora is their capsule to defeat sex diseases and more than that, the unspeakablity of it. The only problem is it misfires at the moments, just when you are about eject all the feelings and and awkwardness. Nevertheless, it deserves to be seen for the hard-hitting and realistic stationing of one of the most important yet unspoken natural diseases any person would face at any stage.

RATING - 5/10*