#BehindTheLens: “Perfect Family is about a family jahan bolte kuch aur hain, aur sach kuch aur hota hai.” — Palak Bhambri

In this conversation with Palak Bhambri, the creator of Perfect Family, we delve into the psyche of a show that journeys deep into the psychological lanes of therapy!

Therapy isn’t a one-stop, transformative experience where one visit to a therapist magically fixes everything. Instead, it unfolds slowly through sweeping gestures and small ruptures, awkward silences and difficult truths, moments of resistance and hesitation. The calm often stands in quiet contrast to the disturbances within, reminding us that healing rarely arrives without discomfort. Sometimes, you have to be disruptive - emotionally and internally to reach a point of clarity, something Perfect Family understands deeply. Released on YouTube to remain accessible to all, and backed by Pankaj Tripathi’s JAR Pictures which championed the project for its intent and honesty, the series exists both as a narrative experiment and an emotional invitation. It asks what it truly means to sit with ourselves when there is nowhere left to escape.

With that in mind, we sat down with the writer and creator of the show, Palak Bhambri, who understands that mental health and therapy are slow processes, ones that need to be reasoned with, not turned into a spectacle. At the same time, she is acutely aware of the challenge of making such themes accessible and engaging for a wide audience. In our conversation, we spoke about how she developed a lens to view the dysfunction of a loud, Punjabi family through a child’s perspective, while ensuring that therapeutic ideas like “respond, don’t react” feel lived-in and relatable rather than jargon heavy or forced.

Also Read: #BehindTheLens: Getting inside the visual and editorial design of Freedom at Midnight with Malay Prakash and Shweta Venkat

Here’s what she had to say!

The show uses a child’s perspective not in a kiddish way and without softening the reality of the adults but simply taking in the brokeness. How did you decide to frame a dysfunctional family and mental health through this lens?

That choice was very intentional for me, but it also came very naturally. I genuinely believe children absorb far more than we assume. They’re constantly observing, internalising, feeling things they may not have the language to express yet. From a storytelling point of view too, when you bring a child into the centre of the narrative, the stakes automatically rise. Kyunki jab baat bachche ki hoti hai, toh dil zyada lagta hai. Starting with Dani allowed us to establish urgency right from the pilot. It tells the audience that something here needs attention like right now! From the second episode onwards, we do move deeper into the family members and their therapy journeys, but Dani becomes the emotional entry point. Seeing everything through her eyes made the situation feel instinctively serious, without having to spell it out.

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Why did you choose to structure the story by moving constantly between the therapy room and home?

Honestly, the first few drafts Adhiraj and I wrote were quite boring, it felt like a very typical TV family drama. Initially, we thought therapy would come in only at the end of each episode. But very quickly, Adhiraj made me realise that therapy is actually the show’s biggest USP, so why hold back? Once we embraced that, we also decided not to put the entire family in therapy together every time. Instead, we structured sessions around themes - empathy, respond not react and brought in specific characters accordingly. Intercutting those sessions with moments at home helped us create contrast. You see what people say versus what they actually do. Bolte kuch aur hain, sach kuch aur hota hai. That hypocrisy, those flaws, felt very rich to explore. By the second draft, this structure felt right, it allowed the characters to slowly unravel in a way that felt honest and layered.

Do you think this structure works in the show’s favour, almost like therapy itself, especially in how it reveals different dimensions of each character, gender dynamics within families and the generational cycle of pain and empathy?

Structurally, therapy gave us the freedom to separate characters, which is important because families together don’t always open up fully. The fifth and sixth episodes were especially exciting because they explored gender within the family, one episode with the women of the household, one with the men. As women, many of our frustrations, resentments, and internalised struggles are often rooted in our relationship with our mothers. That’s not just personal, it’s social. Our country raises daughters differently, and those tensions usually play out within the same gender. So the need for empathy is actually greatest where the conflict is strongest. Exploring parent-child relationships, especially within the same gender, allowed that empathy to come through far more effectively than if we’d focused on couples or siblings. What makes it even sadder and braver is that all these women exist together, yet they still can’t truly see each other. It was also a bold storytelling choice to hold back Somnath and Vishnu, your so-called trump cards for an entire episode. That episode does so much with the interplay between past and present, even breaking the fourth wall emotionally. While watching it, you might not cry immediately. But when Dani meets Neeti on the bus at the end, it all spills out. You’ve been absorbing it quietly, and then suddenly it hits you - that generational cycle of pain, understanding, and release.

As a writer, how did it feel to watch director Sachin and the actors inhabit this space? Did they live up to your expectations?

We were present on the shoot, and honestly, so I saw the work firstand. One of Sachin’s biggest strengths is how confident he is with the camera. The shifts in focus, the way reactions are captured, it really supports the narrative. So much of the story is about how something said by one person lands on another. Even small elements like doors needed to be framed carefully, and the way he handled that worked beautifully for us. And I was both surprised and extremely happy with how the actors approached the text, especially Girija Oak. They understood the material instinctively and knew exactly what to do. There was very little that needed to be said from our end, apart from occasional technical inputs like emphasizing a particular line, ensuring the right word was used in therapy scenes, or correcting a word that may have been dropped. The actors were always happy to accommodate that because they clearly understood the larger narrative. These are veteran performers, and their experience really showed. They came extremely prepared, and it was evident that they knew their characters inside out. As a writer, that’s incredibly reassuring and honestly, very fulfilling. Like Sachin mentioned, we always have the edit table to shape things further, so that trust makes the process even smoother.

Casting Manoj and Seema Pahwa, a real-life couple, added a natural layer of authenticity to the family dynamic. Neha Dhupia’s presence as the therapist stood out in a very deliberate way. She never tried to dominate the room, maintaining just enough distance to hold space without becoming part of the family. That balance was crucial. If the therapist gets too involved, she stops being a therapist. Neha embodied that line beautifully as she was warm but grounded, attentive without being intrusive. The therapy room needed to feel like a safe space for vulnerability, and she ensured that. The contrast of a loud, chaotic Punjabi family opposite someone so measured and precise created a compelling dynamic as once she spoke, they quietened down and listened.

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One of the most striking aspects of the show is that therapy isn’t treated as a one-stop solution. Nothing is neatly revealed or resolved and the family feels more aware, not “fixed,” with the sense that more layers still remain. This feels very true to how therapy works in real life. How did you arrive at this approach?

I’ve personally taken therapy at three very difficult phases of my life - different kinds of therapy at different times. During COVID-19, when I moved back home and started living with my parents, I began thinking about this “what if” situation: what if your own family had to go to therapy together? How comedic, dramatic, and emotionally messy that could be. When you start writing from a place of character truth, you realize very quickly that there can’t be a clean resolving show, because human relationships are far more complicated than that. The real challenge is balancing authenticity with accessibility. If you explore every character in complete depth, episodes become very long and heavy, and the show loses its lightness. A heavy narrative has to stay light on its feet.

So I went back to the basics. In many ways, this isn’t really a show about therapy, it’s about understanding. Therapy begins where healing begins, but these characters didn’t even choose therapy for themselves; they were pushed into it. That made it an interesting starting point to explore what it means to “therapize” yourself and the people around you - to listen, to consider another person’s pov, and to pause before reacting. As a society, we’re quite far from these basic emotional practices. That’s not necessarily good or bad, it just is. But if storytelling can gently show that process in a way that’s accessible, why not? And if you’re staying true to therapy, this is only the beginning. We haven’t gone deep yet, we’ve just created a surface-level understanding between people and a little bit within themselves. Neeti’s arc, especially, doesn’t find closure and that’s intentional. She’s more complicated, and her journey can’t be neatly wrapped up.

How much was the show researched because the show engages deeply with themes like abandonment, self-harm, loss of identity, and emotional neglect - ideas that often fall under what we call “pop psychology”. 

It took a lot of research. I read up on what self-harm actually means - how it manifests and where it comes from emotionally. Often, people who are deeply angry or emotionally repressed look for some kind of outlet, and that informs how we approached these choices. For instance, giving self-harm to Neeti came from understanding her rage issues. Similarly, the choice of showing masturbation through Vishnu wasn’t random - it’s isolating, private, and entirely within his control. It’s the one thing only he decides for himself, and no one else can intervene. That sense of control was crucial to his character. Yes, these are pop psychology terms today, but I feel the problem is that everything has become “pop” without us truly understanding what it means. I used to feel disconnected from myself. So I went deeper, reading extensively, especially Esther Perel’s work, her interviews and podcasts, along with other therapists. Not just my own therapy, because individual experience alone isn’t enough. The challenge was understanding where these traits originate within a character and then weaving them in authentically, so it doesn’t feel like jargon, but lived behavior.

That’s also why we were very deliberate about who carries which issue. For example, we gave abandonment issues to Somnath. We don’t often acknowledge that fathers, especially from older generations, can struggle with abandonment. It flips the expected narrative. In the same way, it’s not a young adult engaging in self-harm, but a middle aged mother, Neeti. A middle aged father, Vishnu meditates rather than an old age person. All of these reversals are intentional, they force you to rethink assumptions. Much like how the presence of a child makes you listen more closely, or how conversations around emotional neglect often center mothers, but fathers can experience it too. I’ve studied my grandparents’ generation closely. They were survivors. Neglect happened, it’s a fact. And when it happens early, it embeds itself deeply in a child’s psyche, shaping how they perceive lack, inadequacy, and connection throughout life. We’re all a sum of our experiences good and bad, and denial is very much a part of that journey too.

Was there a specific reason for choosing Delhi as the setting for the show? How did the idea of therapy eventually evolve into the retreat?

It came from a very personal place for me. The characters are loosely inspired by my own family, and this is a culture I know intimately. When you ground a narrative in a specific cultural setting, it instantly feels more real, lived-in, and relatable. Initially, there’s always a hesitation - should we lean into it this much, should we put everything in? But we decided to make that brave choice and fully embrace the setting. Once we started working with that authenticity, it just began to fall into place and work naturally for the story. As for retreat,we needed a narrative end point. Vishnu’s heart attack became the emotional catapult from there, the story had to move towards vulnerability. Since it’s an eight-episode series, there’s only so much you can hold emotionally. The retreat felt like a natural third act with the family being physically together while also being pushed into therapy together. It creates a double tension: trying to heal while being forced to confront the truth. That contrast between closeness and discomfort is where the finale truly lives. And going somewhere after a heart attack is the most Punjabi thing that you can do!

Was there a moment in the show that felt especially cathartic for you?

The fight in the fourth episode. In the first take itself, I had tears in my eyes, and the entire set went silent. It felt eerie but also painfully close to home. That explosion of emotion, that rawness -  it’s my favourite moment in the series.