Basement Company: A Creative Evaluation

MX Player’s Basement Company starring Apoorva Arora, Gagan Arora and Mayur More is a situational comedy that features three freshers' journeys in a music start-up called Punjabeats. As luck would have it, three of them have to work in a dingy basement as their office space. How far would they survive?

Trailer Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLvqHqf6BPc

Good Points:

• The casting of the show is amazing. We have already seen Gagan and Apoorva playing love birds in TVF’s College Romance. Mayur also became quite popular after his stunt in Kota Factory. The other supporting cast has also done a fantastic job.
• The direction, production quality, and artwork is also nice.
•  Some jokes like “Kareena’s Kajal” and “Dad was right that you can’t make true friends after school” were witty and relatable.

Scope of improvement:

• The show starts with the announcement of a lucky draw and then we see Pankaj, Raj, and Rahul packing their stuff and moving to the basement. Instead, the whole event of someone moving to the basement could have been established well. The makers could have shown the curiosity and gossip happening in the office about the big event that was about to happen. This could have also helped in establishing the characters.
• The scripting could have been better. Some jokes didn’t land at all and made the episode longer. Example: Chandni asking Jack about the story of his name and he tells the story of his brother’s name, John. Why?
• Why was Jack still happy even after Rahul books the wrong tickets? Wasn’t it his responsibility? Doesn’t that why he asks Rahul not to tell anyone before handing him over the authority at the first place?
• There were several continuity errors throughout the show. For example, in episode 3, we see Raj and Rahul fighting in the basement. In the starting of the scene, there was no bag on Rahul’s shoulders but in the next shot, he is seen carrying the bag.
• In second episode, we see Raj fixing the Wi-Fi in the morning and when the day ends, we still see his sitting in the IT room. Does that mean he was there the whole day?
• In second episode, the selfi Sukhi clicks and what he posts are two different photos.  
• Speaking about the last episode, we see the super saying “The Lucky Draw Day” and then we see montages of all the events that happened after that and then we reached to “The Present Day.” This was indeed very confusing because it appeared as if Sukhi was having flashbacks of all that happened but then I realized that he can’t have flashbacks of something that has not yet happened as per the timeline. This could have presented in a simpler way.
• In episode 5, the video call with Malhotra looked out of space. If Sukhi’s OTS shot was taken while he was looking on the phone, it could have looked better.

Scope of Brand Integration: From Rahul managing to book flights at a low price or adding ingredients to the cake, there were many scenes that could have been used for organic brand integrations. But I understand that’s more of a channel’s decision.

Conclusion: Basement Company is a decent show that could have been better if attention to minute details were taken care of. One thing I feel sad about is that there is hardly any scope for a season 2. It would have surely been interesting to watch Raj, Rahul, and Simran pursuing their own passions at Punjabeats office.