Thank you Naina for alerting me to this trailer! I find it fascinating. Not in isolation, but in comparison with the source material.
I watched the first season of The Good Wife because it is set in Chicago and I am such a localvore. It missed a lot of little details about the local scene, but it grasped the way political scandals work, and political wives, in this particular time and place.
Chicago is EXTREMELY progressive. If you want to be a male elected official here, it helps if you are married, and it helps if the person you are married to has equal progressive public credentials to you. One of the rising power couples in our local scene right now are both lawyers, and the wife works as the husbands campaign director. That’s what gets you noticed. We are so progressive that most of the rising couples in the local political scene right now are same-sex. But even with a same-sex couple, we want more than just being a spouse, we want the spouse to be interesting and hardworking and dedicated as much as the candidate.
The reason this show is so complicated, and picked this title that is so deceptively simple, is that a “Good Wife” in this particular progressive political scene is a really complicated balance. You need to be a unit, a strong marriage makes people feel safe, like the candidate can be trusted, has a support system. But you also need to be outspoken and independent and with your own interests, because the voters want to see that this is a marriage of equals, that your husband is strong enough to let you be your own person. And you need to be clear that you are not “trapped” in your marriage because of traditional social rules, you are choosing to love this person every day.
The start of The Good Wife, the original show, is struggling with this push-pull between feminism and morality, versus family loyalty, and public versus private. In the progressive world, a woman is not necessarily honored for being loyal to a husband who has done wrong, for “forgiving”. There are people looking at her going “that’s so weak, so wrong, she should leave him”. And she herself is feeling that way, and people close to her are telling her that. And people that are telling her she is doing the right thing are saying it for the wrong reasons, suddenly you are becoming a symbol of tradition gender roles you have always fought against. On the other hand, there is the reality that standing by your public husband will help your family as a whole, will help your husband stay out of jail, will be better for your kids.
From the start of the show, the showrunners knew that their “heroine” was going to end it as an antihero. At the start, a lot of other characters see her as a naïve innocent, a victim. But a few characters are already calling her out for playing it safe, seeing through her hypocrisy. And over the course of the show, that is the thread that is pulled on more and more. She is “playing” the good wife because it benefits her, not because it benefits her husband.
Okay, now we have the Indian remake trailer staring Kajol. This had the possibility of being AWESOME. India certain has it’s own concept of “good wives” who stand by their husbands. But the problem is, this trailer is backing away from the really complicated ethical questions and instead just leaning into the drama.
What the trailer doesn’t give me is a sense that anyone in society would think that Kajol SHOULDN’T stand by her husband. There’s no feeling that she is choosing to do something for selfish reasons that she doesn’t have to do. And there could be that feeling, there could be an an acknowledgement that Indian marriages aren’t all the same, that maybe people are telling Kajol not to be angry because men will be men, or that her feminist friends are telling her she is letting them down by forgiving him. But instead we just have “oh wow, Kajol is actually angry” as the big reveal. And all the character brought over from the original show have the similar flattening. I don’t get the Boss Lady MegaFeminist vibe from her boss, I don’t get the Charming But Possibly Weak from her other boss. I don’t get Spoiled Handed Everything Rich Boy from her work rival. And the Archie Punjabi replacement is bland-bland-bland. Where’s the Independent Sexual Unattached Unemotional vibe that contrasts so strongly with the quiet “Good Wife” vibe of the heroine?
The Good Wife is a seemingly universal story that actually was very VERY specific. And it worked because of how specific it was, how common graft is in Chicago, how the progressives versus more progressive balance works, all that stuff. And I just don’t think the writers of the Indian version were willing to dig into the specifics of how this would work in India, to actually build their own world.
What do y’all think?
dontcallitbollywood 
It’s not Good Wife, but I think this trailer is very good, modern and serious. It looks like a great role for Kajol and other older actors.
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I’m glad Kajol gets a good role, but it doesn’t really grab me. I would be surprised if it gets a second season.
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I’m only interested in it because of Kajol. I don’t think they do a good job of porting western stories to Indian context. I don’t like Aarya and I’ve watched the original Nordic show in is original language. I guess if you watch the original the copied version just doesn’t feel as good 🤷🏻♀️
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I feel like a lot of these remakes of TV shows, not just Indian remakes but all international remakes, it’s counting on people being intrigued by the buzz around the original show but wanting a version in their own language so they don’t have to read subtitles. So many remakes now are exact copies. There’s no desire to take this story and really think about how it would be different if it was moved, if anything there’s an effort to make sure Nothing Changes so people who read about the original get exactly what they expected. So dull.
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Exactly. I am so curious about how a similar idea would translate into a different culture. Not interested in an exact copy
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Maybe there are some constraints from the original – what they allow to change in a remake vs not
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I guess. But that gets back to “then why do it?” If the only way you can get the rights is to agree not to change anything, who would want those rights?
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Yeah I think India has not figured out content-based production like Hollywood. It’s still driven by stars and in the transition stage. There’s no good way or pipeline to find creative writers and funnel them up – yet?
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I feel like in the olden days the stars handled that funneling. They heard a lot a lot of script pitches and picked the best ones. But now it’s all in flux and WEIRD.
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I don’t think it’s a rights thing because we see Netflix do this with their own shows where they control the rights. I think it’s a streaming theory of content thing. You have a good script that worked, just translate it and cast local actors. Some of the shots even mimic the original. (See Badla.) It’s probably cheaper to pay people to translate a script than to rewrite it, and to execute a copy than to create their own vision.
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Hmmm… I am with Angie. I don’t think it is the Good Wife but I am intrigued by the trailer.
I started off really liking the Good Wife and ended up hating it! Mostly because the protagonist became the villain not just an anti-hero.
The premise of the show was obviously fascinating to me. It was clearly inspired by the Hilary and Bill saga, but they took that premise and then fictionalized why the woman would stick by her husband and what does she do next. It was also interesting to me, given my husband’s and my line of work. (No husband is nothing like Peter Florrick on the show but still seeing two lawyers, one in government, one in the private sector, in one house, raising a family is just relatable and fun to see).
I also agree with you that from the beginning you could see the hypocrisy, and manipulation in Julianna Marguiles’ character but I didn’t mind it. She started off with shades of grey and I was fine seeing those but still rooting for her. She was an incredibly smart and talented women who had been backed into a corner, of course she is going to fight back and have the “me and my family first” attitude. But as the show progressed, she lost all of her moral compass. She wasn’t an anti-hero, she became a straight out villain. And this is where I have an issue with the writers. I am sick of watching shows with strong and flawed women but ones that the audience is rooting for and then the writers just completely villainize her. Same thing happened in Game of Thrones. That isn’t feminist or even entertaining to me, that just annoying and frustrating.
Anyways… with The Trial, I am okay if the Indian version keeps the outline of the characters but then changes their motivations to Indianize it and make it relatable to the Indian audience. And frankly, I want a protagonist that I can root for and maybe Kajol is that person based on the trailer?
On a side note, I adored Christine Baranski’s Diane Lockhart and Archie Punjabi’s Kalinda and they continue to be some of my favorite characters. I really like Sheeba Chadda and Kubbra Sait who play corresponding characters in the Trial. They are both terrific actors and I want to be optimistic that they will come through on the show.
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Christine Baranski is so great. I loved cush jumbo in the Good fight also
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Did you follow the behind the scenes drama on the Good Wife? I wonder if that is part of why there was such a spin from “shades of gray” to “nope, she’s bad”. Whatever happened between Archie Punjabi and Julianna MArgolis seemed to make the writers not like Julianna as much as a person, plus it killed a really deep character building space for Julianna.
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I did not but now I want to look it up. But if you did follow it, please do tell!
I hated how the show depicted the deterioration of their friendship though. Okay, Kalinda slept with Peter but from what I remember, wasn’t it a long time ago before Kalinda knew Alicia? Also, hadn’t Peter at this point slept with half of Chicago? To break off a friendship with a woman who was pretty amazing to you over sleeping with your jerk philandering husband after forgiving your husband and deciding to stay with him, was beyond ridiculous.
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Fairly confirmed rumors from the set said that Julianna absolutely refused to be in a scene with ARchie Punjabi ever again. They had to bring in Cash Jumbo to be her “new friend” and make all kinds of wild changes just to avoid the two actresses interacting. Not clear why (possibly jealousy that Archie Punjabi was getting so much buzz?), but it really damaged the show. The intention was they have that big fight, and then make up and are closer than ever, and the relationship continues to evolve. But instead there was backstage drama so they weren’t able to finish the storyline and it just got WEIRD. And then Josh Charles also wanted out? Just seems like maybe Juliana is really hard to work with.
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/the-good-wife-a-behind-the-scene-feud-destroyed-a-fan-favorite-friendship.html/
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And Josh Charles exited via death so yeah it must be severe!
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It makes me appreciate SRK even more – how he’s professional and just tries to get along with people at work
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Yes! It’s remarkably easy to tell who is hard and easy to work with once you start just looking at who people choose to work with multiple times. Everyone wants to work with SRK. And also, strangely, Katrina Kaif! She must be a dream to work with, directors and producers and actors are always fighting to work with her. I don’t actually think you can have a successful career in India without being easy to work with, since so much of it is personal choice as to what projects you want to be on.
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Agreed Margaret. I think being hard to work with is more of an exception in India because of how much casting is based on pure personal preference.
In a way it’s easy to distinguish who is truly difficult to work with. However, I always worry about that on two fronts: 1. It’s easy to label someone, especially women, as difficult to work with when they start standing up for their rights. 2. The unequal distribution of power makes is so that most actors/actresses have to play nice/stay silent even while enduring harassment just to survive.
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Yes I did follow some of the feud between the two actresses and how the last scenes together couldn’t even be shot together. Don’t know the reason for it though. Totally makes sense how it would’ve bled into the character
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