Category: TV

By Shailesh Kapoor

It’s good to be back after the longest break (a mere three weeks) this column has taken since its start in 2012. In my early years as a media professional, I was trained to think that in this industry, one week is like one month in another industry; there’s just so much action around.

So three weeks should seem like three months, right? Instead, I’m asking: Did I miss anything at all? Nothing that would change the world, but here’s how my catch-up of the last three weeks looked like.

The Rio Agony

We clearly did not have our best Olympic games. With a series of agonising fourth-spot finishes and near-misses, especially in Shooting, India came back home with only two medals, both won within 16 hours of each other, by two women athletes who were not the most likely contenders for winning at the start of the event.

But the media discourse around the Olympics was more about what happened before and after those 16 hours. From the Shobhaa De selfie tweet to the political jostling to “own” PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik, we saw two extremes of what ails Indian sports – a lack of public awareness of what it takes to be an athlete, and a systemic rot that holds our athletes back from winning big, respectively.

The GEC Struggle

You don’t miss anything if you take a break from the GECs these days. The genre continues to lose viewership since January, dropping almost 5% in the last one week itself. When a film premiere of a mid-range film (Baaghi) outscores top fiction and non-fiction shows, you know all is not right. A new show called Brahmarakshak opened very well to further perpetuate the media stereotype that fantasy fiction is all Indian viewers want to watch these days.

Balika Vadhu ended and Diya Aur Baati Hum is ending soon. Even as they leave their legacy, we are left wondering: Is new legacy being created?

The Caribbean Chapter

The West Indies Test series ended with a damp squib and a bit of a farce in the fourth Test. India did well enough to win the series 2-0, and the two T20s in Florida this weekend will bring the focus back from the Olympics to cricket. For the next four years.

The Tapes That Are Watermarked

Last night was one of the more substantive editions of The Newshour. Times Now got hold of about four hours of audio footage (that they claimed they have audio watermarked!) on telephonic conversations that Rahul Mukerjea had with Peter and Indrani Mukerjea over a few weeks since the ‘disappearance’ of Sheena Bora. Some of these phone calls were played out last night, and the rest are lined up for today. It was compelling viewing, and I have to confess it simplified the case considerably for a viewer, with primary evidence on display. Arnab Goswami is often accused of running his own courtroom every night, but with hard evidence on display, that didn’t seem like such a bad idea last night!

By Shailesh Kapoor

After what seems like ages, there’s something the core Hindi GEC viewer is truly excited about. The credit for ending the lull goes to Star Plus’ upcoming fiction show Naamkaran.

Promos for Naamkaran went on-air in the second week of August, a month before the programme’s September 12 launch. In the four weeks of the campaign, this Mahesh Bhatt-helmed show has managed to cut through, with a strong emotional tug at the viewers’ heartstrings. On Ormax Showbuzz, it has tracked better than all female-targeted weekday fiction shows since 2011. In times, when viewer interest in new GEC content is seeing an alarming drop, Naamkaran has set this record by bucking the trend.

Whether the show goes on to be a success will only be known with time. But at a campaign level, Naamkaran’s launch has been one of the best fiction campaigns in a long time. Relying on a child protagonist is not a new phenomenon, having been pioneered by Colors and then milked to death by most other channels. But in Naamkaran, the mother-daughter relationship and its associated challenges come across as deeply personal, than overbearingly social.

However, if there was one thing that stands out in the Naamkaran campaign, it’s the use of music. The show has a complete soundtrack to boast of, involving some of the best Bollywood talent of the day. The music videos give the campaign a distinctive edge, standing out by breaking the template of a GEC launch promo that viewers by now are too familiar (and bored) with.

It’s also a rare case when Bollywood’s involvement has worked for a GEC fiction show. In what clearly comes across as an interpretation of Zakhm with a gender switch (the daughter in Naamkaran was the son in Zakhm), Bhatt has lent not just his name but his experience and sensibility to the show. Whether that sensibility actually helps Naamkaran once it goes on air will be interesting to see. But it has helped the campaign in no small measure.

Naamkaran replaces Diya Aur Baati Hum (DABH), the 2011 launch that ruled the roost for a large part of its five-year tenure. DABH has not been milked dry like some of the other long-running hit fiction shows over the last decade. By resisting the temptation to stretch a blockbuster show that’s still doing average ratings, Star Plus may have inspired some of its competitors to think differently too.

The coming weeks will also see other action on the Hindi GEC front, particularly the launch of Bigg Boss 10 and Naagin 2. But for now, it’s time to welcome Naamkaran, a launch campaign that delivers by breaking a jaded template.