Maa Behen Review: A Dead Body, Three Women, and the Most Fun Netflix India Has Had in Years
Maa Behen is one of Netflix India’s most entertaining originals in recent years — a sharp, dark comedy that balances laugh-out-loud chaos with genuine emotional depth. Powered by terrific performances from Madhuri Dixit, Triptii Dimri, and Dharna Durga, it’s a warm, witty, and thoroughly binge-worthy family crime caper that rarely misses a beat.
Maa Behen Review: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ 4/5 — Funny, heartfelt, and endlessly watchable. A dark comedy that proves family dysfunction has never been this entertaining.
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Platform: Netflix
Director: Suresh Triveni
Release: June 4, 2026
Cast: Madhuri Dixit, Triptii Dimri, Dharna Durga, Ravi Kishan, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Arunoday Singh
There is a particular kind of film that announces its intentions in the first ten minutes and then spends the rest of its runtime gleefully exceeding them. Maa Behen is that film. It opens quietly, in the cramped familiarity of a middle-class North Indian home, with a mother and her daughters who can barely be in the same room without an argument breaking out. And then a local priest dies unexpectedly in their kitchen, and everything — the bickering, the old wounds, the carefully maintained distance between these women — gets thrown into spectacular, darkly hilarious chaos.
The premise sounds like it could go wrong in a dozen ways. A body-hiding comedy built around a mother-daughter trio in a conservative neighbourhood — too broad, too convenient, too likely to sacrifice character for plot mechanics. What Suresh Triveni does, and what he also did in Tumhari Sulu and Jalsa, is keep the people at the centre. The comedy comes from who these women are, not just from what they are doing. And that makes all the difference.
Madhuri Dixit plays Rekha, the mother — strong, frustrated, proud, and carrying the particular exhaustion of a woman who has managed everything alone for too long. It is one of the most liberated performances of her recent career. She brings her effortless grace to the role but strips away the polish entirely, and what is left is something warmer, funnier, and more real than most of the work she has been given in recent years. Her comedic timing is impeccable throughout — not the broad, winking comedy of lesser films but the kind that comes from a character so specifically drawn that the jokes feel inevitable.
Triptii Dimri, as Jaya, the elder daughter, matches her scene for scene. After a string of strong performances across different directors and genres, Dimri has clearly reached the point where she knows exactly what she is doing and does it with total confidence. Jaya is the most emotionally grounded of the three women — the one who thinks before she acts, who carries the weight of family history most visibly, and who has to hold things together even when she is the least equipped to do so. Dimri plays all of this without a single false note. It is her best screen work yet.
Also Read: Maa Behen Release Date: Here’s When Madhuri’s and Triptii‘s Dark Comedy Premieres
Dharna Durga, making her acting debut as Sushma, the younger daughter, deserves considerable credit for holding her own in a film anchored by two of Indian cinema’s most watchable performers. She brings a youthful, slightly chaotic energy to the trio that balances the other two perfectly. The three women together feel like a real family — not because the film tells you they are, but because the rhythms between them, the specific ways they annoy and protect and ultimately rally around each other, feel genuinely lived in.
Ravi Kishan, as the priest whose untimely death starts everything, has relatively limited screen time but makes an impression that lingers considerably longer. Geetanjali Kulkarni is quietly excellent in a supporting role, as she almost always is. Arunoday Singh brings the right amount of tension when the police investigations begin to close in.
Also Read: Backrooms Review: A Terrifying Internet Legend Finally Finds Its Way to the Big Screen
The screenplay, written by Pooja Tolani and Suresh Triveni, moves at a pace that never gives you time to think too carefully about the plot’s more convenient moments. There are one or two twists you will see coming, and one or two scenes that lean slightly further into absurdity than the film strictly needs. Neither bothers you for long because the film’s fundamental energy — warm, chaotic, genuinely funny, and surprisingly touching — carries you straight past them.
What lingers after Maa Behen is not the crime comedy plot but the family underneath it. Three women who love each other badly and need each other completely. The body in the kitchen is just what finally made them admit it. An absolute entertainer. Do not miss it.
Maa Behen is now streaming on Netflix.