There’s something inherently promising about the setup of Do You Wanna Partner. Two women take on India’s testosterone-fuelled liquor industry by launching a craft brewery — on paper, it’s ripe for disruption, drama, and dark comedy. But what could have been a bold, character-driven show ends up pouring from the same tired bottle: a fizzy but flat concoction of startup tropes, improbable plotlines, and tonal confusion.
Shikha (Tamannaah Bhatia) leaves her plush corporate job to chase a dead man’s dream — her father’s abandoned brewery idea, crushed years ago by betrayal and corporate theft. She joins forces with her best friend Anahita (Diana Penty), and they set out to build Jugaaro — a name that screams “quirky” in all caps, which is exactly the show’s energy: trying too hard to be clever, cool, and chaotic all at once.
Of course, because this is a streaming dramedy in 2025, there’s a startup pitch, viral social media success, a mysterious founder invented over a drunken call, and a gangster with a heart of gold and ₹2 crore in cash. It’s the kind of writing that throws in ideas like darts, hoping at least one sticks.
The central gimmick — Anahita inventing a male persona, David Jones, to win respect in a male-dominated field — is genuinely interesting. But instead of exploring gender politics or the reality of being underestimated, the show spins it into pure farce. Enter Dylan (Jaaved Jaaferi), a struggling actor with short-term memory issues, who is hired to physically play David. What follows is a sequence of wigs, reels, and public appearances that push absurdity far beyond satire, into sheer cartoon territory.
Not that absurdity can’t be fun — it can, and occasionally, it is. Nakuul Mehta’s Bobby, a brewer with single dad energy, anchors the madness with a sense of quiet conviction. Shweta Tiwari’s gangster-financier Laila is a riot every time she appears, all sass and steel. Even Diana Penty finds some truth beneath the chaos. But it’s all swimming against a current of convenience — scenes where problems solve themselves, success appears overnight, and character arcs bend to fit punchlines.
This is a show that wants to say something about women in business, maybe even about legacy and ambition, but it doesn’t have the patience for reflection. It rushes from twist to twist, hoping that if the pace is fast enough, you won’t notice how little of it makes sense.
Do You Wanna Partner, produced by Dharmatic Entertainment and directed by Archit Kumar and Collin D’Cunha, is loud, erratic, occasionally entertaining, and entirely overfamiliar. It drinks from the same keg of startup-show clichés we’ve seen before, just with new faces and glossier packaging. It may get you buzzed for a bit — but it won’t leave a lasting aftertaste.
IWMBuzz rates it 2.5/5 stars.
