A tale of
friendship, betrayal and cross-cultural conflicts, written by and starring Meera
Syal.
Childhood friends Tania (Laila Rouass), Sunita (Meera Syal) and Chila (Ayesha
Dharker) are now in their 30s and at a crossroads in life. But their friendship
still holds them together. Sunita, the eldest, used to be 'super swot' until she
flunked out of university to marry her psychotherapist sweetheart, Akaash
(Sanjeev Bhaskar). Then she turned into 'SuperMummyji'. Now she feels trapped by
two kids and an unfulfilling job.
'Gob Almighty' Tania is the ambitious career girl who's left her family and
'community' behind. Speaking her mind got her into trouble but out of Ilford.
The baby of the gang, sweet, naive Chila, is getting married. She's bagged the
Prince Charming of Chigwell himself, Deepak Sharma (Ace Bhatti) - the man of her
dreams. But he has a catalogue of former girlfriends - including Tania.
As well as starring in the programme, Meera Syal wrote the novel which Life
Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee is adapted.
Both heart-warming and heartbreaking, it's inspired by the juxtaposition of two
news stories running in the same newspaper, on the same day: One headlined
'Asian Women Top the Graduate League' and on the opposite page 'Asian Women Top
the Suicide and Self Harm League'.
Meera admits: "It disturbed me profoundly to see evidence of how much we can
achieve, laced with our ability to destroy ourselves. It made me want to look at
my life and the lives of my friends, all of whom were going through seismic
changes in our belief systems and relationships."
Stars include Meera Syal (Sunita), Sanjeev Bhasker (Akaash), Laila Rouass
(Tania), Ace Bhatti (Deepak) and Ayesha Darker (Chila)
Recorded from Satellite TV, compared to a retail DVD, the quality is around 8/10
(Very Good!)