Once upon a time you would have a 60 minutes documentary of a swanky hotel presented by Alan Whicker or Clive James. It could be Caesar's Palace in Vegas or the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Now documentaries about top class hotels come around regularly, it was Claridges in London last year and now its the turn of the Taj in Mumbai, lets forget that Michael Palin spent some time here during his first Around the World trip, that was 25 years ago.
The first thing to notice is that the Taj is rather affordable, you can have rooms for a reasonable rate, not that you would know from this documentary which decides to ignore everyday guests and decides to concentrate on the more expensive suites constantly reminding us of the daily rate.
So the the four part documentary opens up with some of the guests in these expensive suites that comes with butler service, some are VIPs, some are rich, you even get as the series goes on some ex- maharajas. The series also focuses on some long term employees who have dedicated their lives in serving the guests of the Taj.
However it becomes increasingly noticeable that the series is padded, here are some exterior shots of the hotel, here are some shots of the Mumbai slums and lets follow some of the employees to their homes. Also its noticeable that the staff speak English to each other for the cameras.
The individual episodes concentrated on certain aspects such as an art auction which conveniently broke the record of the most expensive art work sold in India, to a wedding taking place at the hotel and the final episode which was a mish mash as it concentrated on some wealthy guests, an auction hosted by Sharon Stone but more importantly the Mumbai attacks that took place six years ago and which the hotel was a victim of where a number of people guests and staff died
However the series was dull because it was padded. You also did not get to see a lot of the hotel because they concentrated on the rich, many of them were rather boring and off putting on television. You have in all the episodes the same information being repeated, it should had been a one hour documentary.
