Getting better

New serials are breaking away from the kitchen-sink drama format.

As we conversed a couple of weeks ago, Neena Gupta offered me a suggestion. “Go through television serials carefully. Yes, we do have regressive shows even now, but I think there’s going to be a gradual shift and serials like Saans will find audiences once again.”

While she continues to be hopeful, and though it’s painful to see Gupta, associated with some of the most memorable films and serials in the Indian entertainment scenario, doing work on TV to bring home the bread and butter, she’s quite right in her assessment.

She confirms that there’s a glimmer of hope and she’s not giving up. Not yet. Real, Miditech’s new channel, for example, has a show called Namak Haraam. It revolves around a married couple where the wife is an IAS officer. She also has an affectionate husband who — another surprise — understands her professional commitments too. He doesn’t rave and hurl abuses at her when he waits patiently in the car for her to arrive from the office. He doesn’t smother her for not laying hot food on the table for him. Thankfully, one doesn’t find the protagonist’s expressions layered under cakes of makeup either. In Namak Haraam, our leading lady is dressed nattily in well-starched cotton sarees sans mangalsutra, or in shimmering nine-yards with fake crystal sequins.

This serial is a welcome break and it does have — thankfully — a solid story, too. It’s not about the sets (the story is set in an imaginary town called Shakti Nagar where lower middle-class residents are facing acute problems of water contamination) and it’s not about how characters are dressed. What makes one switch to Real is the believable story of a couple who find their paths clash because of their principles. So, while the lady, in her enviable position as Shakti Nagar’s collector, wants to set everything right, her husband, a businessman, sees “loopholes in sarkari kaagzat [government papers]” to make profits in his business. They are neither particularly good nor bad as people, it’s just that their professional lives collide, which affects their marital life.

When one sees episodes of this serial it’s credible that perhaps there’s a sort of change that is being seen on Indian television. At least some new serials (I would still say these serials are a minority) are consciously breaking away from kitchen-sink dramas and politics. There’s Agle Janam Mohe Bitiya Hee Kijo, a new serial on Zee TV that looks at the struggle of a young girl who battles abject poverty — not any mother-in-law in dripping diamonds — and observes how one of her closest friends gets sold to an old but wealthy letch by her own parents. On the face of it, the serial is depressing, not because of jarring camera movements, but because of its storyline and strong content. However, it’s precisely the story of this serial that’ll force you to watch it once in a while.

Unfortunately, Colors has been disappointing me lately. It’s been difficult as a viewer to forgive the channel for its horrific trailer that it showcased for one of its upcoming shows. A group of elderly men, led by a lady, drown a newborn baby girl in a big barrel filled with milk. While the trailer was taken off air following a strict order by the government, just thinking that it was cleared by the channel’s creative honchos leaves me — and many others, I’m sure — very depressed. Even Balika Vadhu, after a fantastic start, has started getting dull. Ironically, another show Jaane Kya Baat Hui on Colors had a good script revolving around a woman who, after getting constantly ignored by her husband, finds love with a younger but very sensitive man. The show’s time (primetime at 10.30 pm) was recently changed to 6.30 pm, a band which rarely finds any takers.