The Death of TV

Imagine how difficult it is to come up with a TV show that caters to the need of Indian audiences. You have to come up with new names uk, cuz well all the other shit is predecided.

Indian tele tends to portray life with filters of prejudice and stereotypes preinstalled.

Think about it!

Isn’t every TV show protagonist from a well to do business family that lives in a house nothing short of a palace (someone show this to Snapchat CEO)

Aren’t all heroines portrayed as the epitome of womanhood, the better-half, truthful and loyal and sanskari af.

Aren’t all villains just interested in spreading chaos among their own family (read in British accent: Some people just wanna see the world burn)

The real world- as we know it isn’t filled with these two dimensional characters. Almost no-one is either black or white. Everyone dons some shade of grey, light or dark, a fact that daily soaps wilfully ignore.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m not generalising tele for you. There have been groundbreaking shows like Udaan, focussing on bandhuagiri or forced labour, Balika Vadhu, a story about child marriage and more recently Shakti, a show about a kinnar or a transgender. Shows like this, however, have been sparse and unevenly spread. 

These too fall into corporate pressure as the TRPs lower and the writers have to come up with ludicrous plotlines and cover-ups.

These include, but are not limited to, falling in love with a gorilla, turning into a fly and a snake-woman travelling by an Uber!

It is reasonable that a TV show takes a lot of effort, whether it is money or time and so these shows must make the producers a shit load of money.

This is actually the case. Let me introduce you to Naagin, the pet peeve (I gotta stop with the puns) of Balaji, the chartbuster all summer last year, constantly securing the top spot in terms of TRP ratings.

The premise of this show- well take a guess- it’s called Naagin.

So on that gloomy note ends the second part of the blog post. Wait for the next one. So long!

See the first part of the blog post here.