One of the major shifts that took place on Indian television was one person who

denoted an era of her own - Ekta Kapoor. Unfortunately for us, she struck gold with
the concept of family shows being held together by a lead woman character. These
women were created to tick all the attributes of some regressive ideal of the beti,
bahu, biwi. The purpose of their lives seems to be to be sorry for everything
happening around them.

Indian television also has become the den of reality TV shows where anger, expletives, flaring

tempers sell more than any of the talent hunt. So, we see a bunch of middle-aged men

fighting over whether an upcoming singer will have roti in his house after the show gets over.

It's good entertainment for the audience as we see foul-mouthed judges give it to each

other. And that's that.

And that's when I drowned in my own thought about what happened to Indian television? It

was decent growing up with the Malgudi Days, Byomkesh Bakshis of my time. And then

everything went to shit.

Back in the '90s, TV shows were so much more progressive. Shows like Hasratein portrayed

real women with shades of gray.

Compare the regressive drivel we watch with some of the shows from the 90s

like Hasratein which showed a woman leaving her husband to start a relationship with her

married boss, was something way ahead of its time and the audience accepted it with equal

maturity.
And now where we see a Simar turning into a fly and taking her revenge on the
vamp of the family, we had the progressive Astitva around 2000. Astitva showed a
career-oriented woman marrying a man almost a decade younger to her.

Women in Ekta Kapoor's shows don't seem to ever have a life of their own. Their
entire universe seems to revolve around their husbands or their in-laws. But 23
years ago (yes, before Sex and the City), Tara portrayed women and their
friendships, which are closer to reality.

How did the rib-tickling humor get replaced by cross-dressing men laughing on cue?

There was the era of the Dekh Bhai Dekhs, Hum Paanchs and the Family No. 1s - where we
saw seriously good actors like Naveen Nishchol, Farida Jalal, Ashok Saraf and even Kanwaljeet
Singh participate in the tomfoolery. That has now been replaced by The Kapil Sharma Show,

which is home for most Bollywood stars who come to promote their films.

And they are welcomed by a bunch of cross-dressing men who crack jokes and laugh when an

alarm called Navjot Singh Sidhu rings. Along with this is the Great India Comedy Circus which

makes fun of its overweight host by routinely comparing her to a buffalo. What happened to

good ol' slapstick humour which can be dumb and still amusing?

Today's shows exist in this bubble of unreal melodrama. What happened to relatability?

While most of today's soap operas claim to give us a picture of what goes on inside the

middle-class family, it doesn't even come close to something that a Wagle Ki Duniya achieved

in the 90s. The show which starred a little-known Bollywood actor called Shah Rukh Khan,

spoke about the everyday mishaps a middle class Indian family went through.

The same decade even had Mungerilal Ke Haseen Sapne, where a man afraid of his

domineering wife and his boss becomes a braver version of himself. Only in his dreams

though. Why has all that charm been replaced by this template of a north Indian middle-class

family which has the same sort of characters, face the same kind of problems and look

painstakingly generic.

Today we have nothing in the league of Just Mohabbat and Hip Hip Hurray. Show-runners

have slowly wiped out all the shows for young adults.
The 90s had shows like Hip Hip Hurray, Just Mohabbat which addressed most adolescent

issues with its own tinge of humour. Hip Hip Hurray followed a bunch of school kids going

through the angst of growing up, Just Mohabbat dealt with an upper middle-class kid dealing

with the pressures of having working parents. The kid copes with it by confiding in an

imaginary friend by his side

Shows like those have now been replaced with drivel like Dare To Date, Roadies

and Splitsvilla, which aim at giving youngsters an 'opportunity to prove themselves' while

other youngsters look on with amusement.

What have we done? How did we get here?

We've been bitten by the vicious bug of catering to the audience. Show-runners are so

convinced that the TV audience comprises of an audience which cannot appreciate cerebral

content, that they have begun tailoring products to the mass preference, while the masses

keep complaining there is nothing else to watch. It's a cycle.

It is because of these trends that tv series or web series are gaining more attention among

youth. To prove the point here is another article from The Hindu.

Tired of mothers-in-law who plot and daughters-in-law who dote? Turn off your
television sets. In fact, throw them out. Instead, tune into Web series which give
you a breather from contrived saas-bahu weepathons on cable networks.

Edgy and fresh, Web series, which have made their mark in India, break free from
staid television formats — there are no time frames to follow, no censorship issues,
and women don’t turn into snakes. “Close to 70 per cent of the Indian population is
young, and a bulk of them is online. So, the Web is not just a distribution platform
to put up existing material; you need fresh content to stay relevant and survive,”
says Ashish Patil, head of Y-Films, the youth division of Yash Raj Films. He says the
channel’s subscriber base was dormant at 18,000 subscribers, who “had forgotten
to unsubscribe”. But, after Bang Baaja Baaraat and Man’s World, they have close to
2,50,000 subscribers.

For content creators in the online space, Web series are a way to keep an audience
engaged and come back for more. Culture Machine, the digital entertainment
company, which owns 350 channels, including Put Chutney, Being Indian and Blush,
recently started incubating long-form content. Sameer Pitalwalla, CEO and Co-
founder, says, “We noticed longer session times among a lot of our consumers. So,
we wondered, can we get them to engage with longer story arcs?” Born out of that
thought is Blush’s Alisha and Stray Factory’s upcoming horror series, Hush, the first
of its kind from South India.

“The South is a more complex market — there are different narratives, creatives,
languages and advertisers to work with,” explains Sameer. New platforms are
constantly mushrooming, while content creators grapple with capturing the Hindi-
speaking market. But, there are a few players exploring the medium in the South
too, such as Chennai’s Stray Factory.

While a series, technically, can be shot on a camera phone with zero production
cost, that isn’t what successful Web series are made of. “We usually celebrate the
success stories. But, we shouldn’t forget that for every video that goes viral, there
are hundred more that go unwatched,” says Arunabh Kumar, CEO and Founder, The
Viral Fever (TVF), which is all set to roll out Season two of the popular web
series, Permanent Roommates.

Production quality, casting and content are major factors that determine how a
series is received. And it’s not enough to make one good video, but to keep
producing good content to keep the viewer hooked; the Internet is full of
options. “India is a country of lazy, inactive and ungrateful audiences. They will
waste Rs. 900 on a bad Bollywood film in the theatre, but if you give them
something good for free, they won’t even hit the subscribe button,” says Arunab.
He explains that while TVF’s subscriber base now stands close to 1.4 million, many
more stop with watching the videos. In such a situation, getting them to pay for
subscriptions and devising a working revenue model is going to be an uphill task.
“This is not very encouraging for the online content-creating industry,” he adds.

Yet, the future of these series looks promising. Y-Films says producers from abroad
are interested in doing a television remake of Man’s World. Decidedly, sequels for
these series can be made not just for the Web, but also for TV and film. YouTube
stars are created every day — actors such as Angira Dhar of Bang Baaja Baaraat, and
Naveen Kasturia, known for his performance in Pitchers, are gaining popularity.

With this medium, there is enough space for everyone’s content and much scope
for innovation. And, with the world moving Web-wards, this is a great time to be a
content creator.