Amazon’s 'Four More Shots Please' raises a toast to women’s indomitable spirit
Life is hard. If you are a woman, it is harder. It is these unsaid and undocumented hardships that are part of almost every woman’s everyday life in urban India which have been chronicled in detail in Amazon Prime Video’s Four More Shots Please.
Directed by Anu Menon and written by Ishita Moitra and Devika Bhagat, the series revolves around the life of Siddhi Patel (Maanvi Gagroo), Damini (Sayani Gupta), Umang Singh (Gurbani), and Anjana Menon (Kirti Kulhari) — women who are young, confident and achievers in their respective fields.
Yes, they are rich too!
But despite most things going for them, everyday sexism, relationship travails and their gender identities bog them down.
No, they do not take a retreat to Goa or Thailand in search of an escape from the spirit-breaking daily grind of managing children and refusing-to-grow-up partners, from the endless efforts to break the glass ceiling in professional environments to open molestations.
Their escape is their togetherness, their bonding sessions at the fictional Truck Bar where as they gulp down liquor and celebrate with shots, they realise they are not alone in the fight. Four More Shots Please is a celebration of female bonding.
Together, the journalist, the law firm executive, the fitness trainer and a victim of India’s ugly marriage market (roles essayed by Sayani Gupta, Kirti Kulhari, Umang Singh and Maanvi Gagroo, respectively) create a world which they enter to escape judgements and character assassinations. In this world of theirs, the four women open up and realise they are being understood — at least, being heard.
No, Four More Shots Please is not a sob story. It’s human to have problems — but heroic to be able to laugh at them.
So the women in the series live and laugh.
So, each day, the four ladies get together after work and share their stories as the owner of Truck Bar, played by Jeh (Prateik Babbar), pours them drinks that they gulp down without any guilt.
But Four More Shots Please is not one big never-ending party at Truck Bar. Through the lives of the four protagonists, the series aims to highlight the myriad issues of sexism and misogyny that impede the personal and professional growth of women.
Yes, the series revolves around the problems of urban women but every story of gender discrimination is important. The background is no ground to dismiss a woman’s story.
Women in the urban sphere face real challenges of balancing work and life, living through relationships whose very foundation is based on gendered inequality.
Four More Shots Please! raises a toast to these women and their indomitable spirit.