Maa Ka Sum Review: Despite Mona Singh & Mihir Ahuja's 'Awe-Sum' Performances, This Show Clearly Shows Need For 'Sum' More Drama!

Director: Nicholas Kharkongor

Cast: Mona Singh, Mihir Ahuja, Angira Dhar, Ranveer Brar, Rohan Joshi, Celesti Bairagey

Where: Amazon Prime

Rating: 2.5*

Creatively inspired by the everyday lingo ‘Maa Kasam’, this week’s OTT release ‘Maa Ka Sum’ walks a path shadowed by relationships laced with drama. Will all of these aspects be good enough to bring whole-sum entertainment is what we will be finding out.

This 8-part series revolves around the young math wizard (international math olympiad scholar) Agastya (Mihir Ahuja), who lives by the belief that every problem (including love) has a formula and that it works on the same formula. He stays with Vinita aka Vinni (Mona Singh), a single mother whose husband had passed away suddenly. To run the family, Vinni works as a real estate agent to earn her bread and butter.

Equations of the situation begin to change with the entry of Ira Raina (Angira Dhar), a razor-sharp and supremely confident new math professor at Agastya’s college. After that, Agastya uses his math logic and introduces his mother Vinita to Abhimanyu (Ranveer Brar).

Will Agastya’s math help his mother find her perfect match and what follows after that is what forms the rest of the series.

Actors' Performance

Mona Singh leads the show; for her, this is just ‘yet another role, yet another compelling and stunning performance’. Not one to stick to the books for a typical mother’s role, she shows the world ‘maa aise bhi ho sakti hai’.

Besides her, there's Mihir Ahuja who makes absolutely no mistake in his approach to the role. He looks very convincing as the math wizard son who wants nothing but the best for his dearest mom.

Then there’s Angira Dhar, who seems tailor-made for the role. The confidence and conviction she exudes in her role make us want to see more of her in films and OTT shows. Kudos to the director for showing her real potential as an actor.

Even though Ranveer Brar is as charming as always, his character goes a bit astray in places. On the other hand, Celesti Bairagey brings the right amount of spunk to her role as Annie. The rest of the cast do not take rest, but work towards carrying the series forward.

Direction, Music and Aesthetics

After having directed films like Fair and Lowly, Mantra and Axone, Nicholas Kharkongor shows spark as a director. With due respect to his craft, one feels that with a premise like ‘Maa Ka Sum’, there were many dimensions he could have explored. Hopefully, we will see more dimensions of his craft in his future projects.

Due credit to the writers of the series (Ravinder Randhawa and Sumrit Shahi) for having come up with a novel idea. Here again, one feels the utmost need for more dimensions (read ‘masala’) in the series.

FPJ Verdict

While this series may not appeal to many because of the modern-day ‘set-up’, it will surely find takers among Gen Z and modern-day parents! To ‘sum’ it all up, all we can say is, ‘Maa Ka Sum … ek baar toh dekhna banta hai’.

Published on: Friday, April 03, 2026, 09:35 AM IST