Yesterday once more
Before garishly dressed vamps turned the kitchen into a runway for designer bindis and vengeful conspiracies, the television was happy playing with earthy emotions packaged into a spectacular experience called Buniyaad, or a warm Nukkad, when not toying with a larger than life microcosm as in Ramayan or Mahabharat. However, since a phenomenon called Tulsi Virani, the small screen did a U-Turn and our drawing rooms became our favourites on television too. But then, even a careless channel surfing these days will find you looking at aging kings, valiant princes and weepy foster-mothers all dressed in times ages behind ours. The robust return of the costume drama, is giving kitchen tales a run for their money, say insiders.
Shailja Kejriwal, executive vice-president, content, of NDTV Imagine, feels that costume dramas are one way a channel could get the whole family back to watching TV together. The channel has also come with with two original scripts for period dramas that borrow from no real historical event. "The daily soaps had turned the family time to women's time. The content of the serials is such, that not everybody would find entertainment in it. With bringing Ramayan back on screen and churning out period fiction like Dharam Veer and Rajkumar Aryan, we wanted to bring people back to the TV in real earnest," she says. Emotions, agree most, don't change with times. The range of emotions portrayed in a costume drama is likely to be same as those portrayed in a daily family drama. However, the hint of valour and the magnified consequences of the same regular emotions extend a certain novelty that is enough to notch up the TRPs.
Redoing the original Ramayan magic at a time when TV is high on the adrenaline rush of doctored emotions in reality shows, was challenging, says Kejriwal. But when you wanted the feel-good back on screen, there could be nothing like an epic and its moral equilibrium. "From news channels to soaps, there were just rapes and killings everywhere, with no particular consequence. A costume drama, with its lofty ideals, ensures that you go to bed with some values at least," adds Kejriwal. Reassurance and values making a return to the screen seems to be an inspiring trend, says Abhijit Dasgupta, city-based tele-serial maker.
"The kitchen crap is so annoying. Costume drama is larger than life, but makes a meaningful watch," he adds. Seconds serial maker Arghakamal Mitra, "The costume dramas that come with a sort of puffed morally educative concept is like a breath of fresh air amid the meaningless TV soaps these days."
If all the goodness of emotional content involved, has inspired the return of the costume drama, it is the current preoccupation with the retro, thanks to the 70mm, that assures the period drama finds takers amid loyal patrons of saas-bahu sagas. "It's like going overtly retro. From films to fashion, there's retro all over the place. So why not TV?" asks Mitra. Add to it the Indian fascination for the fantastical and the mythical. There's no denying the fact that the quasi-religious and the mythical in deeply ingrained in our social fabric, and hence, demands a timeless appeal. Ashish Kaul, executive vice-president, Zee Network says that the Indian audience is naturally responsive to myth. "A concept like an Icchadhari Nagiin works because in India there seems to be an emotional, often religiously forged connection between, myth and real life," he says. So, as the conspiring vamps, devoted daughters and flawed sons are flogged to death in soaps which claim proximity to our own lives, similar emotions twisted in the tail with a general dose of the supernatural comes as reprieve. "As a general entertainment channel we have to work with varied genres. And this demands innovation. Most concepts like the popular saas-bahu ones come with a shelf life when they become predictable," explains Kaul. So, as we finally start yawning over the plastic surgeries and generation leaps, we want emotion and there's nothing more entertaining than costume drama when you watch it comfortably at home, free of cost! Tele-serial makers, like Agnideb Chatterjee, agree that there's very little scope of experimenting in TV. But then the television serial is a medium more powerful than even cinema, so there remains a responsibility that is not fulfilled by the loud, thoughtless sentiments that become the drawing rooms soaps these days. An end served by costume dramas that sort of write out life in blacks and whites. Moreover, there's a certain level of satisfaction even in adults in seeing fantasies unfolding on screen. "It's like seeing your dreams coming alive on screen," says Chatterjee.While director Kaushik Ganguly finds most things on TV pretty mindless he vouches for the fact that the visual glamour that comes with a costume drama, however behind times in concept, is something that nothing else can match. "It's a rare grandeur for TV. A costume drama with its special effects and visuals numb mind to reason unlike soaps which asks you desert reason for entertainment.
https://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Yesterday-once-more/ 273237/
Shiv Shakti
Hindi TV Shows
Sports
Music Corner
