Review of Let’s Talk with Lakshmee

I was hearing a bit of chatter regarding this TV show, so I decided to check it out on the Baiganchoka video archives. To be honest, I thought it would be another cheesy West Indian TV show that we all watch with friends and family and laugh at the crap that’s shown as our “culture”. To my immense surprise, the show was pretty good. I watched the first episode which was aired originally on Valentine’s Day. Lakshmee interviewed an elderly couple, Savita and Kevin and then a younger couple, Tej and Manevaskar. There are a lot of positives in this show. I feel that Lakshmee’s intimate setting, with her on the same couch as her guests, the background ambiance and the fact there is no audience makes this show really relatable to the audience viewing. I find other shows with live audiences are such nuisances with people always screaming things to the guests and Jerry Springer type of obscenities always comes to mind. With an intimate setting like Lakshmee’s the guests, you can plainly see are much more comfortable on set. Also, she is great at engaging her guests. The first couple, Savita and Kevin, it seemed at first Kevin wasn’t really comfortable with talking as much as his wife. When Lakshmee asks him a series of questions but does it in a delicate way, he opens up and starts speaking about his personal love adventure with his wife Savita. I adored how she interviewed this couple who is probably in the same age group as my parents. It seems no one ever asks this age group how they met and to explain their stories, which are always enriched with drama, in the fun sense. The second couples, Tej and Manevaskar were very vibrant guests. I really appreciate her speaking with artists in our community. Tej is a spoken word poet and I’ve seen her perform many times, which I feel she is inspirational especially to other West Indian females. Her husband, Manevaskar is a photographer, which means this couple has creative energy oozing out of their pores. It is amazing to see that they promote each other’s work and support each other, when usually in some West Indian households; Arts & Culture is not avidly supported as such. I really think that Lakhmee’s show has a lot of great potential especially if she keeps up with promoting an engaging environment while supporting our communities’ creative energies. The only negative thing that I observed is that she really needs to set her stage microphones in the right direction or maybe get some more studio equipment because the interviewees are hard to hear, especially when Kevin and Savita were being interviewed. Great show Lakshmee and I’ll continue to check it out! Pady Naidu