Indian television is immature. So are the audiences.
How else can serials with little or absolute illogical, monotonous and sometimes irritating themes manage to continue for years in a row?
The same saas-bahu saga, packaged and repackaged, evacuated and refilled with little or no modifications what-so-ever, and the housewives with their eyes hooked on the box laugh (to the most obvious jokes), cry (to the over dramaticised emotional sequences), get excited (to the more than obvious and predictable situations) and listen to the characters’ self talking (which is obviously irritating, sometimes to excruciating extents). After-all, we all know what a vamp would think in that situation and how a courageous righteous bahu would be exercising her determination by making firmer resolutions at the same time.
Who talks like that?
The small screen celebrates womanhood. They (women) are everywhere. Almost every serial is woman centric, which shows her to be a determined, hard working, sacrificing and righteous when she is the good one and the exact opposite when not.
The plot is always over dramatized with the master ‘K’ formula in place, which neither the makers or the writers do away with, nor do the audiences want to get over with. It has for so long kept the audiences in a limbo, the comfy cuddly environment of falsehood that is their only escape from reality. The reality they prefer to ignore.
Womanhood no doubt needs to be celebrated, but I seriously believe there are other better ways to do it. Why not show stories with working housewives as their protagonists and the day to day problems they face, right from getting up from a tiring yesterday in the morning, to preparing breakfast for her family before leaving for work and looking after a child. Working in the office, facing the wrath of seniors, gaze by perverts, covering the mistakes by juniors in the team she manages, to tackling stressful situations (sometimes with panache and sometimes with a style so silent that the most undercover won’t get a hint of!!). The portrayal of such characters in all the naive simplicity and substance and then broadcasting the message in a subtle sarcastic manner would definitely multiply the impact of an act and the series as a whole. It is better not to always have all-inclusive dialogues. Sometimes when things are kept mum, and the audience is given the task to make things out for themselves within the dynamics of a drama set up, the interest evoked is by and large encouraging and people start loving the show, who then long for every next episode and gasp for more at the end of it. The people start to live with the characters as they do with their companions. In the recent years, there have been serials which have made a promising start, even had a breath of fresh air with them, but once the honeymoon period ended, things got back to ground zero.
Time to time, the intellectual fuel of the creative team exhausts and gets mileage only when they take little hints from here and there. And that is when the rot creeps in.
In a stark contradiction, the small screen dramas in the west thrive on a more serious and intellect stimulating and smashingly entertaining stuff made with sheer brilliance on the part of the script, story, screenplay and execution.
They make stories in the center of which lies a chemist (Breaking Bad), a serial Killer (Dexter), Scientists (Fringe), Medical Professionals (Dr. House), Lawyers (Suits), CIA (Homeland), Kings and Kingdoms (Game of Thrones), Supernatural stuff (Supernatural and Vampire Diaries) and many more.
They appeal equally to all, in spite of their dive into the technicalities of the profession of the characters they deal with. Such is the beauty of their content and display. The comedy shows are equally absorbing.
Indian television has been through a phase of evolution. YUDH – the story of the construction magnate with all his perfections and imperfections, family, life, fears, guilt, anxieties, plans, love, affection and foresight is just a beginning.
Divyanshu Ojha
MBA-IT (2012-2014 Batch)
IIIT Allahabad