#Love review: Aishwarya Lekshmi, Arjun Das are the only gloss in a wobbly romance

Netflix's Tamil series #Love pits two rival dating-app believers against each other in a 60-day challenge. The show has a timely hook and strong leads, but its central romance seldom feels emotionally earned.

In Short

• Netflix's Tamil series #Love explores modern romance through dating apps
• Tara believes in compatibility; Matthew trusts chemistry
• Series is visually polished but sometimes lacks emotional nuance

Love is supposed to be messy. Algorithms, however, would like to believe otherwise. Netflix’s Tamil series #Love takes that contradiction and turns it into the premise for a modern romance.

Created by Soundarya Rajinikanth and directed by Balaji Mohan, the six-episode series follows Tara Krishnan (Aishwarya Lekshmi), the founder of dating app Found, which is built around compatibility, and Matthew Jebraj (Arjun Das), an investor in rival platform Find My Bae, which believes in chemistry. When the two meet, they enter a 60-day challenge that puts their opposing ideas of love to the test.

It is a neat setup, even if the destination is obvious. You know Tara and Matthew will be drawn to each other. The real question is whether #Love can make that journey feel fresh. At its best, it does. At its weakest, it talks too much about love instead of letting us feel it. Now why is that?

Tara is the more interesting of the two, at least on paper. Her belief in compatibility comes from some pretty painful experiences. Her parents’ marriage fell apart, and she herself had been betrayed in love. So, she throws herself into work and builds Found around the idea that maybe love can be made a little more predictable. Aishwarya Lekshmi is quite good as Tara. She keeps that tough, sorted exterior going, but when it starts to fall apart, you can actually feel what she’s holding back. The problem is, the writing doesn’t really dig into those wounds. We’re told what shaped Tara, but we don’t always get to see it.

Matthew, on the other hand, is all about instinct. He’s an adrenaline junkie and firmly believes that when there’s chemistry, you just know. Arjun Das fits into the role quite easily. That deep voice, laid-back charm and screen presence make Matthew easy to watch, and his chemistry with Aishwarya Lekshmi (sort of) works too. Here the problem is that there isn’t much more to the character than what we see on the surface. He’s the usual carefree romantic who hides his vulnerable side behind all that confidence, and the story doesn’t give him enough layers to make the character feel fresh.

The show's glossy treatment is evident from the beginning. One of Matthew and Tara's earliest encounters ends with him dropping her home in a private helicopter. It is visually fun and certainly makes a statement about the world these characters inhabit, but it also makes the romance feel slightly removed from reality. It's like #Love is polished almost to a fault.

The 60-day challenge is where the series finds its strongest storytelling idea. Tara and Matthew are forced to use each other's dating philosophies, turning their rivalry into an experiment in love. It also gives the show space to explore relationships beyond its central couple.

Some of those stories are far more affecting than expected. A shy man struggling to come out and a woman slowly realising how unseen she has become in her marriage bring a welcome emotional honesty. They show that modern relationships are rarely as simple as chemistry versus compatibility. Sometimes, what people want most is to be heard, understood and acknowledged.

Unfortunately, the series keeps circling back to its central debate. Tara and Matthew have long conversations about what love means, what makes relationships work and whether chemistry can be trusted. Initially engaging, these discussions eventually begin to feel repetitive. The screenplay explains its themes instead of allowing the characters' actions to reveal them.

That becomes the show's biggest weakness. At six episodes, each roughly 30 to 40 minutes, #Love has enough room to build a convincing emotional arc. But Tara and Matthew don't always change enough for the stakes to feel personal. The challenge is a good narrative device; the emotional transformation it is meant to produce is less convincing.

The supporting relationships fare better. Matthew's bond with his stepsister Mia adds warmth to his character, while his complicated equation with his family gives him some much-needed depth. Tara's friendships also feel more lived-in. Arun's (the gay friend) parallel track, in particular, is one of the strands that leaves you wanting more. Gayatri Hariharan makes an impression, while Arjun Chidambaram brings energy to his limited screen time.

Visually, the series is handsome. The production design captures the glossy world of startups, while Chennai gets an appealing treatment. Balaji Mohan's direction occasionally finds the right balance between humour and romance, and the background score keeps the series moving.

But there is a strange irony to all this polish: even the painful moments sometimes look too carefully arranged. A romance needs little imperfections – awkward pauses, bad decisions, silences that say more than dialogue. #Love occasionally finds those moments, but it often reaches for grand gestures and big conversations instead.

Aishwarya Lekshmi does much of the heavy lifting, giving Tara a controlled exterior and glimpses of vulnerability underneath. Arjun Das brings an effortless charm to Matthew, and their chemistry is one of the show's more convincing elements. The trouble is that the screenplay doesn't always build enough emotional foundation beneath that chemistry.

#Love is therefore neither a complete miss nor the sweeping romance it occasionally wants to be. It has a clever premise, attractive leads, some genuinely touching side stories and enough visual polish to make for an easy watch. But it is caught between being a breezy rom-com and a deeper examination of love in the dating-app era. The irony is hard to miss: a series about finding the right connection sometimes struggles to connect with its own characters.

#Love is streaming on Netflix.

- Ends