Hello! Remember Me? — starring Ishaa Saha, Paayel Sarkar and Sourav Chakraborty — is a spin-off of the popular Hoichoi web series Hello!. Helmed by Abhimanyu Mukherjee, this too is a psychological thriller that follows the format of Hello!, which starred Raima Sen, Priyanka Sarkar and Joy Sengupta, where the lives of a married couple are turned upside down upon the arrival of a mystery woman. Here’s why you can try Hello! Remember Me? for a weekend binge-watch.
Ex-flame turns bete noire
Hello! Remember Me? has Ishaa as Malini, Sourav as her husband Abir and Paayel as her ex-partner Tori. Malini, who is in an advanced stage of pregnancy, runs into Tori in Darjeeling when holidaying with Abir and his family. Tori is desperate to get back with her former live-in partner, and follows Malini and her in-laws to Kolkata. She manages to move in with the family on a flimsy pretext, setting off alarm bells for Malini and beginning a cat-and-mouse game. The show explores how Malini’s in-laws deal with uncomfortable secrets from her past that Tori brings along.
Ishaa and Paayel live up to their roles
Ishaa Saha stays in her comfort zone. In the initial episodes, Ishaa does a good job of playing a nervous damsel-in-distress. However, as the story shifts to Kolkata, she is indistinguishable from her character in Indu, another Hoichoi thriller, as a submissive homemaker. As a person who can go to great lengths in her obsessive possessiveness over her ex-partner, Paayel Sarkar brings subtlety to her performance, emoting a lot through her eyes as she schemes and plots.
Doesn’t outmatch the original series
Hello! owed its success largely to the smart writing and shocks galore, which are missing in this spin-off. In Hello!, the entire first season was dedicated to deciphering the identity of the mysterious woman. The eighth episode revealed her real motives and dropped a shocker for the audience — Nina (Priyanka Sarkar) is in love with Nandita (Raima Sen) and they have a history.
Hello! Remember Me? begins with Tori’s fierce determination to get back with her ex. The mystery behind Malini’s fear is resolved by the second episode as flashbacks reveal her romantic relationship with Tori. So, the tension is built around the question of whether Malini’s in-laws will find out about her past or not. And for this, some subplots are thrown in that feel very unnecessary.
Some of the supporting characters come across as one-dimensional too — Malini’s mother-in-law, for example, is oblivious to what’s going on with her daughter-in-law and her sole focus is on the soon-to-be-born grandchild.
The character of the husband feels sketchy too; it is not as significant to the plot as Anonyo (played by Joy Sengupta) was in Hello!. In this spin-off, Abir is suspicious of his wife and that is the only progression of this character over the eight episodes. With the lack of a backstory on Abir and Malini’s romance and marriage, or more complexity in their relationship, this married couple unit doesn’t act as a strong foil for the Malini-Tori dynamic.
Same-sex love remains unexplored
Tori and Malini’s romance is only incidental in this eight-episode web series. Their ‘love’ is not fully explored. In the flashback of their time as live-in partners, Tori and Malini come across as friends rather than lovers.
There is a hint of homoeroticism between the two sisters-in-law (played by Laboni Sarkar and Pushpita Mukherjee) but this angle has been used just as a layer to the main plot.