Anusha Rizvi’s The Great Shamsuddin Family doesn’t attempt to reduce society to neat sociological diagrams. Instead, it opens itself to the glorious, unruly mess of everyday life — the frictions, overlaps, and complications that animate real families. The tone is light on its feet: observant, witty, and full of the comic unpredictability of a home where people wander in unannounced and stay long enough to spark three fresh arguments before the tea cools.

At the centre of this whirling, affectionate chaos stands Bani Ahmed, played with wry understatement by Kritika Kamra. A separated writer racing a career-defining 12-hour deadline, all she wants is a quiet day with her laptop. Instead, she gets what the Shamsuddins specialise in: interruptions, overlapping advice, emotional crossfire, and a revolving door of relatives who treat her flat as neutral territory, comfort zone, battleground, and therapist’s couch all at once.

The real disruption arrives courtesy of cousin Iram (Shreya Dhanwanthary), who walks in carrying a crisis wrapped in several smaller ones. She has invested a sizeable sum in a “guaranteed" scheme through a friend who has now vanished — phone switched off, explanations absent. Worse, the money was withdrawn from her mother’s account using a forged signature supplied by Umaira (Juhi Babbar), whose flair for imitation strayed inadvisably into bank documentation.

To complicate matters further, all three elderly sisters — Akku, the sharp-tongued eldest (Farida Jalal); the second sister (Dolly Ahluwalia); and the youngest, Sheeba Chaddha’s unsentimental matriarch — are leaving for Umrah the next morning, along with the youngest brother’s wife, Iram’s mother (Natasha Rastogi). Iram must replace the money before they depart; any loose end could trigger an in-house earthquake.

In desperation, she demands her mehar money back from her ex-husband. He promptly returns the........

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