‘Oops! Ab Kya?’ review: Forced motherhood leads to easy laughs

Oops! Ab Kya? is a flippantly titled show about a life-altering error. In the Hindi adaptation of the American series Jane the Virgin – itself a remake of a Venezuelan telenovela – a young woman who has never had sex becomes pregnant because of a goof-up at her health clinic.

Mistakenly injected with her employer’s sperm, Roohi (Shweta Basu Prasad) deals with forced motherhood as well as the reactions of her family, boyfriend and the couple for whom the sample was originally intended. Roohi’s mother Paakhi (Sonali Kulkarni) didn’t marry her biological father, making the young woman reject the obvious solution of an abortion.

Roohi’s predicament also stems from her grandmother Subhadra (Apara Mehta). Never having heard of birth control or being distrustful of it, Subhadra has advised Roohi to choose honour over a sex life.

One might have imagined a woman with a Victorian mindset to counsel her unattached granddaughter against keeping the baby. But a show has to be born too. Accordingly, Roohi is 27, still sleeps in the same bed as Paakhi, and has transformed her police officer boyfriend Omkar (Abhay Mahajan) into the model of abstinence.

Over eight episodes, directors Prem Mistry and Debatma Mandal follow Roohi as well as the other characters in her orbit. Hotelier...

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