Anupama: Namaste America
Anupama: Namaste America is an Indian Hindi-language drama web-series which aired on 25 April 2022 on Disney+ Hotstar. Produced by Rajan Shahi and Ishika Shahi under Director's Kut Productions, it stars Rupali Ganguly and Sudhanshu Pandey. It is a prequel series to Star Plus's Hindi television series "Anupamaa". Premise. The story is set 17 years back from now in 2005, 10 years after Anupama and Vanraj's marriage when Anupama was Vanraj's wife and a mother to two kids Paritosh and Samar and how she got an opportunity to fulfil her dream  from USA and how Vanraj's grandmother supported her to follow her dreams. However some conditions forced her to quit her dream and become the Anupama which was shown in the initial episodes of "Anupamaa". What were those circumstances? Production. Development. Rajan Shahi the producer of Anupamaa announced to make a prequel web series to Star Plus TV series Anupamaa. Casting. Though most of the cast from original series were retained including Rupali Ganguly, Sudhanshu Pandey, Arvind Vaidya, Alpana Buch, Shekhar Shukla and Ekta Saraiya reprising their original roles as Anupama, Vanraj, Hasmukh, Leela, Jignesh and Dolly respectively. Actors Paras  Kalnawat and Ashish Mehrotra playing Samar and Paritosh respectively were not cast for the series due to their characters being portrayed as younger kids. Thus their roles passed on to child actors Vidvaan Sharma and Dheer Bhanushali respectively. Muskaan Bamne playing Pakhi was also excluded from the cast because of her character yet to be born. While actress Madalsa Sharma Chakraborty's character Kavya Gandhi got replaced by a new character Ritika played by Puja Banerjee, Nidhi Shah's role Kinjal was completely eliminated from the series. Actress Sarita Joshi was cast to play Hasmukh's mother. Later it was  confirmed that Gaurav Khanna will reprise his original role of Anuj Kapadia. Filming. The series has been shot on the original sets of "Anupamaa" with some changes in Film City, Mumbai. Broadcast. It is an eleven episodes series which premiered on Disney+ Hotstar on 25 April 2022 with each episode being uploaded daily. Reception. Arushi Jain of Indian Express wrote "I feel the show is only an extension of what we saw in the first six months of its televised version: it tells you what all Anupama ‘jheloed’ in her marriage with Vanraj. Only this time, Ganguly has kept Anupama  chirpy and lively, but she also delivers enough sad-but-c’est-la-vie expressions into the camera".