Over-the-top drama, designer labels and a cast that's hard to root forLast updated: June 02, 2026 | 07:543 MIN READAlizey Mirza and Lailli Mirza on Desi BlingNetflix Dubai: Desi Bling might be one of the most fascinatingly terrible reality shows I've watched in years. It's the kind of television that makes you question not only the state of reality TV, but your own life choices as you hit 'next episode' for the fifth time in a row.Marketed as a glimpse into the lives of wealthy South Asian expats in Dubai, the show feels less like a portrayal of the diaspora and more like a caricature dreamed up by someone whose only understanding of rich South Asians comes from Instagram reels about luxury cars and destination weddings. The wealth is loud, the outfits are louder, and the authenticity is nowhere to be found.Get updated faster and for FREE: Download the Gulf News app now - simply click here.What makes the show particularly difficult to stomach is the cast of men, who are almost universally impossible to root for. Satish Sanpal, spends much of the show behaving like a man perpetually trapped in a bachelor party, allegedly always partying with other women, and generally acting in ways that would cause concern in most marriages. Yet the rest of the cast treats it as an amusing personality quirk, repeatedly referring to him as "naughty" as if he's a mischievous schoolboy rather than a grown married man. Tabinda Sanpal's seemingly endless devotion and tolerance of his behavior only adds another layer of confusion to the dynamic.Then there's Dyuti Parruck, whose interactions leave an equally sour taste. Watching him speak disrespectfully about the mother of his children is uncomfortable at best, and representative of a broader issue throughout the show: many of these relationships feel hollow, transactional, and strangely disconnected. By the end, I wasn't invested in any of them, I was mostly left wondering whether anyone on screen actually likes each other.Ironically, the people who end up grounding the show are the ones who seem least interested in performing for it. Alizey Mirza, Lailli Mirza, and Tejasswi Prakash emerge as some of the only genuinely watchable people in the cast because they occasionally puncture the show's exhausting cycle of manufactured drama. While everyone else seems busy maintaining an image, they come across as comparatively self-aware and real. Tejasswi, in particular, often feels like she's reacting to the absurdity around her the same way the audience is. The Mirza twins bring a level of charisma and ease that the rest of the cast desperately lacks, and their scenes are among the few that don't feel completely engineered by producers. The show's biggest problem, however, is how aggressively manufactured it feels. Of course reality television has always been produced and manipulated. That's part of the genre. But Desi Bling operates with all the subtlety of a high school theater production. Every conversation feels engineered. Every confrontation arrives with the precision of a producer standing just off-camera saying, 'Now ask her about the rumor.' The cast rarely seem like they're interacting naturally.The celebrity cameos don't help matters either. Rather than feeling like organic interactions between the cast's lives and the wider entertainment world, most of the appearances land with all the subtlety of a sponsored Instagram post. Every celebrity drop-in carries an energy of 'look who we know' rather than serving any meaningful purpose within the story. Instead of seamlessly blending into the show's world, these moments often feel like carefully orchestrated networking opportunities designed to validate the cast's social status. Beneath the tackiness, the designer labels, the over-the-top displays of wealth, and the painfully staged drama lies the secret ingredient that powers all great trash television: compulsion. It's awful, but it's never boring. Every episode promises another train wreck of misunderstandings wrapped in diamonds and couture. You know it's bad. You know it's probably exploiting every reality-TV cliché in existence. And somehow, despite yourself, you're still watching.Related Topics:Get Updates on Topics You ChooseUp Next