'Little Things' S4 Review: A Rare Slice-of-Life Gem About Self-Discovery

Little Things season 4 is streaming on Netflix.

Dhruv Sehgal and Mithila Palkar in a still from Little Things season 4.

(Photo Courtesy: Netflix)

Little Things, back for its fourth season, is a sweet show about mostly sweet people living a very real and honest life for the most part. It’s very rare that love stories on screen don’t mean exaggerated larger-than-life love, fighting or sex, because real life love stories exist somewhere between living through the mundane, real love stories exist mostly after Raj has found and now gotten together with Simran.

In India, a lot of our stories are about how the boy gets the girl, but Little Things is about what happens when boy and girl have been together for years and actually seen real life together.

Little Things is perhaps one of my favourite Hindi shows for a lot of reasons. The universe is so lived in and real and it stays so true to its name that the problems and the true happiness do lie in the little things.

It's the one hour on the couch with your favourite person and Chinese takeaway that make your day and a box, marked fragile with cutlery in it, when it arrives with your favourite Finnish plate broken, that can seem like the world is collapsing (but it really isn’t though, trust me).

A still from Little Things season 4.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube screengrab)

The subtle nuances of the little hurts, the little bruises, the little joys is what makes up all the conflict, drama and high points of this show. Relationships, aspirations, friendships, parents, bodily expectations, listless afternoons in pyjamas, unemployment, dissatisfaction with how “Indian” things can be and more.

If one is sick of all the war, political, crime or science fiction and dystopian content that seems to be bombarding us right now, this is a rare slice-of-life gem, all about self-discovery, buried amongst the heavier stuff, and will probably be the closest thing to any 20-30 year olds real life one will see in a while.

This inward looking mini plot in this season has all its major characters and actors returning, Dhruv Sehgal as Dhruv, Mithila Palkar as Kavya Kulkarni, Rishi Deshpande as Satish Kulkarni and Navni Parihar as Ila Kulkarni. Special shoutout to Mithila for having, as always, understood the soul of this character to the point of perfection. She breathes such real breath into middle-class Kavya from Nagpur, bright spunky and out to fulfil her ambitions, that it almost feels as if I’m just watching one of my friends live their everyday life. Dhruv Sehgal, too, is wonderful as the Finland-returned almost NRI in this season, his intellectual academic idealism infectious and relatable for anyone who expects more from their homeland than just the disappointing bare minimum.

A still from Little Things season 4.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube screengrab)

This season has Dhruv, returned from Finland to work as a bright PhD project lead in Mumbai, and Kavya, onto exciting new corporate opportunities in Mumbai, reuniting in the beautiful Kerala and then making their way to Mumbai, where they live together. The story meanders through contrasting professional experiences the two have and yet, the very similarly mundane disappointments they face. Two young people, figuring out who they are and what they want not only from each other but also from life, as marriage, money and society loom in the background. Through Dhruv we learn the pain of ideals and through Kavya the pain of ambition, and through both, in this season, we learn a lot about not getting flustered in the weak moments but instead to see them, recognise them and somehow find the strength to keep going.

Besides the wonderful understated and almost muted writing and acting that is note worthy, the direction too is easy on the eyes.

One is shown the beauty of not only their domestic world with craft but also the beauty of this world, our world in general, amidst all the chaos, a gentle reminder that if all is not well right now, eventually it will be. The music score is beautiful, reminiscent strongly of Tajdar Junaid in the right places and the song of a happy gondola ride in Italy in others, making its presence felt but not jarringly.

As a note to end on, for its penultimate season, Little Things probably got it right, leaving enough to the imagination while answering almost all pertinent questions and Little Things will be missed by me, who has watched all the four seasons with equal parts a smile on my face and a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart.