The hand of history weighs heavy on Vir Das, the Indian stand-up whose viral monologue ‘The Two Indias’ – in which he unsparing took his home country to task for its manifold societal failings – caused such a sensation that he thought he was going to be thrown in jail when he returned home from the International Emmys in November 2021.
‘Wanted’ is nominally framed around that. It starts with a ten-minute warm-up section (‘this isn’t the show’ he assures us) to accommodate the fact that ‘Indians are always late’. But when the show proper begins, Das leaps into a description of that fateful flight home, and a concerned air hostess pressing a gin into his hand on the grounds that he was probably going to need it.
It’s all set up to be the focus of the night, a proper exciting theme… but it falls a bit flat. On one level it’s for good reasons: Das avoided prison. But even so, you’d think there would be more material in the experience than he actually manages to muster in a routine that flits back to the central story without ever seeming as interested in it as we are. It turns out to be just a comparatively small part of a polished, laidback set that focuses heavily on lighter material relating to Indian culture: the difference between Indian and British toilets; the Indian schooling system; the Indian equivalent to the Emmys.
It’s all enjoyable stuff, and it’s also an agreeably different experience to watch a show that gently decentralises the white Western members of the audience: Das is correct in assuming a good chunk of his crowd will be of Indian origin, and there’s a substantial amount of audience interaction based on that fact. A couple of moments will fly over non-Indian audience members’ heads. But just a couple – only the most fragile Westerner could possibly feel left out.
Das is a star, effortlessly amusing and charismatic, reassuringly unflappable. But he sets ‘Wanted’ up to be a show about the complexities of the ‘Two Indias’ fallout - and it simply doesn’t live up to the hype.
