Succession To Shark Tank India, 10 Shows About Rich People That’ll Call You Poor In Several Languages

Cries in poor!
Succession To Shark Tank India, 10 Shows About Rich People That’ll Call You Poor In Several Languages

I’ll start with a cliché line because I just saw Succession Season 4 and it confirmed that rich people are kinda cliché. They say money can’t buy happiness, but it is utter bullshit told to cajole us non-rich folk into feeling better. The truth is, if you have money, a great extent of happiness can be achieved. You have a house. You have whatever food your want. You don’t look at price tags before buying things. You can travel anywhere in the world. And you can do all that with the perfect blowout, looking like you walked out of an episode of Gossip Girl or Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives. Hey, I could be happy with that! And sure, rich people on TV shows do f*ck up a lot, but come on, we’d be smarter!

Right now, with salaries not being enough, and layoffs affecting most jobs, it’s kind of a treacherous idea to watch shows that are about filthy rich people. Will that be an escape to watch Vincent Chase and his Entourage live it up in Hollywood while you can’t even go to the theatres to catch a film? Or will it be vicarious living to watch Blair and Serena fly in their private planes to Paris, shop on Champs Elysées, and actually get to wear those clothes out on dates with the sexiest men? Can dipping ourselves head-to-toe in quiet luxury silence our misgivings about being unhappy and make us content?

Either way, here are 10 rich people shows that called us poor in several languages!

1. Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives

 

From having your kids showcased at a debutante ball (à la cotillion from Gossip Girl) in Paris whose name you can’t pronounce properly (Le Bal? Le Baal? Kya hai bhai?) to vacationing in a posh Middle-Eastern country with your ‘gals’ and hobnobbing with the crème-de-la-crème of the society, these Bollywood wives did it all.

A show that was meant to give us an insider’s perspective on what it means to be a Bollywood wife, ended up being a very scripted and unsurprising look at the frivolous lives of Bollywood families. But the moolah be showing and how!

Also Read: 10 Thoughts I Had While Cringe-Binging Fabulous Lives Of Bollywood Wives. Mainly, Naya Kya Bola?

2. Keeping Up With The Kardashians and The Kardashians

With its 20-season run, KUWTK is easily one of the longest in American reality television history. It has given us some QUALITY insights into the lives of the Kardashian-Jenner brood. And its follow-up, The Kardashians, continues to build on it.

Of course, we aren’t here for intelligent conversation, but the scandals, fights, sassy jibes, business empires and complicated relationships, encrusted with oodles of money, gold and diamonds is what makes Keeping Up With The Kardashians and The Kardashians so irresistible. You can love it, you can hate it. But you can’t ignore it!

 

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Also Read: Kim Kardashian Took A Private Island For Her Birthday. During A Pandemic. Without Bothering With Masks

3. Gossip Girl

The Upper East Siders in this show were barely adults when we started, but they could’ve literally gotten away with murder (and they did) because of how their pockets and designer handbags were jingling with cash. There was insane amount of rich people shit going on in Gossip Girl, from the Bass industries turnover to Serena Van Der Woodsen’s covetous wardrobe to everyone flying only in private jets!

These people were so rich that they’d even forget that they had illegitimate children running around, and barely pinched their lifestyle even after the family’s matriarch turned over their fortunes to some random con artist. They made it all look so easy and fabulous, that even when it all got a little ridiculous (seriously Dan and Blair?) and made us feel like Lonely Boys and Girls without such fancy money, we had nothing but XOXO for Gossip Girl!

 

The money and the accompanying drama were so addictive, that it spurred a reboot. While the Gossip Girl reboot might not have been as successful, we fans of these Upper East Siders continue to charter rewatches to escape from our economy-class lives. *Cries in poor*

4. Succession

If you thought shows about rich people are always frivolous AF, you won’t succeed in your argument. Because here is Succession, a BAFTA, Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy award-winning show that isn’t just smart and funny, it’s the best show out there.

The Roy family owns a media conglomerate, and as the ailing patriarch’s children get ready to take over the family’s reins in the future, there’s a lot of friction.

 

Succession, in its final season, is the kind of rich people show that isn’t about being flashy or extoling the virtues of money. If the last season is anything to go by, it actually highlights just how much worse it can get for these people that put money first. Yet, we are still gonna chafe from envy! There are wads and wads of cash, chartered helicopters ready to take off, and quiet luxury making fashion statements loud enough for the whole world to take notes! I’ll cry with emotions, sure, but that’s some nice cushioning!

5. Dynasty

Most reality shows like FLOBW or KUWTK get so ridiculous sometimes that you wish they were a fictional show instead of claiming to be reality television. And the answer to your prayers is Dynasty. The show is as if Ekta Kapoor was born and raised in the US and decided to make a show there, but didn’t hold back those shocking twists and turns, plastic surgeries and backstabbing family members.

The show’s Carrington family is based out of Atlanta, Georgia, and has everything you’d want from a soap opera—a patriarch who cares more about business than family, estranged children with secret parentage, ex-wives, dangerous affairs, plastic surgeries, people dying, people coming back alive, losing business, gaining business back, and of course, lots and lots of money being thrown around like it was just spare change.

 

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Dynasty is one of my favourite shows for mindless entertainment, mostly because Elizabeth Gillies is an absolute stunner who makes me hold my breath every time she comes on screen. Her style and beauty looks are so on point, and her character, Fallon Carrington is incredible and a boss lady.

What’s more, Dynasty has quite a legacy. It is actually based on a 1980s show of the same name and storyline!

6. The Big Day

Marriages are made in heaven, but rich people’s marriages are made in some designer heaven I suppose. Because some alas level of show-sha is happening in it. And here to tell you about it is not one but two parts of this Netflix show called The Big Day.

The Big Day, as most of the other shows on this list, looks absolutely breathtaking, with so many outfits and wedding idea inspo that you’d probably want to get married a couple of times just to cover it all. But if you peel off those layers, the show has a very hollow message about modern Indian weddings and how they’ve been reduced to a spectacle, even as the wedding industry grows by leaps and bounds.

You’ll like it if like Geet from Jab We Met, tumhe bachpan se hi shaadi karne ka bada shauk hai, by God!  Watch it for lavish weddings that put the extra in extravagant, and for all your Sabyasachi, Wedding Filmer and destination wedding dreams come true. But not for you. ‘Cos you poor, hun.

Also Read: The Big Day Review: The Show Is Basically A Showcase Of A Big, Fat Indian Wedding. It Called Me Poor And Unprepared In 7 Languages

7. Entourage

Despite the flamboyant AF Hollywood lifestyle that it shows, with all the vices and scandals, I cannot say one bad thing about Entourage. Everything from its opening credits set to ‘Superhero’ (Jane’s Addiction) to Ari Gold screaming “LLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOYD!” and Johnny Drama’s antics and the bevy of women walking in and out of these boys’ lives, Entourage is both the glamorous life you’d want to live and avoid at all costs, unless you’ve got an entourage of ride-or-does like Vinny Chase does.

Yes, the show isn’t always politically correct, but it is more realistic about the fabulous lives of Hollywood boys than Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives is about our film industry. So of course!

8. Downton Abbey

I mean, this story of a British aristocratic family in the post-Edwardian era. Of course, wealth exists, and it exists to be flaunted. So you’ve got plenty of lavish balls, beautiful English ladies dressed in resplendent gowns and jewels. Mind you, these are all titled people, so you’ve got earls, rich widows and a Dowager Countess, and in stark contrast of their servants who also play a prominent part in their story.

As if six seasons weren’t enough to call us poor, it returned to do so with a film continuation!

9. Billions

All I am saying is, I will only recover if I can have a bathtub full of cash to soak in, every night, and enough money to make me feel like I could be one of the investors on Shark Tank. That’s all.

10. Bad Boy Billionaires

Okay, Trigger Warning. At a time when everyone, from your country’s politicians to your bosses and neighbourhood dukaan walas are pulling scams on you, it is possible that this show might set you off. Bad Boy Billionaires isn’t exactly the fun kind of rich people show you’d sit down to watch. But there’s no denying that there’s a barrage of wealth at display here as we trace back the rise and subsequent fall of India’s bad boy billionaires like Nirav Modi, Vijay Mallya, Subrato Roy and Ramalinga Raju.

This is practically a show that strips down all the fiction and mystery and PG-13 filters surrounding all the above series and shows you what really happens when rich people go overboard and don’t have a team of writers to write them a cop-out from their problems. Then again, they do have the other rich and powerful backing them up, and entire governments funding their scams, so I guess they do win too. Either way, they leave you feeling frustrated and poor AF!

Also Read: 10 Reasons You Need To Watch Bridgerton On Netflix: It’s Sexy, Scandalous And Bingeable AF!

Special mention

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story

 

Yes, of course, it’s a period drama and fictional. But let’s admit that everyone in Bridgerton (except the Featheringtons, poor things) are rich, and there’s a king and queen who have enough lavish castles to live separately, and even give a few away to lords and dukes. Plus, who doesn’t want to attend balls every other evening in gorgeous ballgowns, never repeated? Ugh, gimme money!

Shark Tank India

Yes Shark Tank India does have business owners coming in and asking for money. But the sharks themselves are super loaded. Imagine having enough money to throw it into business ideas that might or might not work. I’d like to be that rich, yes, please. Aman Gupta, the co-founder of BoAt, just walked the Festival de Cannes red carpet with wife Priya Dagar, becoming the first Indian entrepreneur to do so. To walk that prestigious red carpet, you either need to be a big entertainment mover and shaker, or have brands sponsor you. Or, like Aman, you become the sponsor yourself!

 

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Okay, I’m going to go make some money. Or check my bank account and cry. This could go either way.

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Jinal Bhatt

A Barbie girl with Oppenheimer humour. Sharp-tongue feminist and pop culture nerd with opinions on movies, shows, books, patriarchy, your boyfriend, everything.

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