Living upto the promise NB3-Article

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Shruti

@shruti

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Posted: 18 years ago

Living upto the promise

he popular reality dance show featuring celeb couples enters its third season with promises of a bigger scale, tougher dance acts and a channel platform with a larger audience base. Having made its mark in the first two seasons with couples from the TV world, NB3 extends its ambit to films this season. Now, whether its courtesy the exhausting of couple options from the telly fraternity or for guaranteeing a larger participation base for future editions only time will tell, but let's start with its most glaring changes. Nach Baliye had made as much mark for its innovative 'dancing with your partner' concept as for its star judges of the first two seasons the inimitable Saroj Khan and the stylish Malaika Arora Khan. NB3 won't be the same without Saroj Khan's seeti and that signature 100 rupee note inam every contestant would die to receive from her. The gimmicks had become an institution in Nach Baliye. But in the transient world of TV, even Amitabh Bachchan wasn't considered irreplaceable for KBC!

However, if Saroj Khan shocked all by calling a female contestant 'manly' last season, Merchant keeps the rude metre up, albeit in English with adjectives like "pathetic, horrible, amateur…" liberally served with a chic 'Dahling.' David Dhawan is a welcome change to the men of few words who had graced his seat in the previous shows, especially for his no holds barred 'dil se' speak. Koppikar doesn't make you miss Malaika much, unless she advertises her ignorance on certain dance forms in spite of being a judge.

As regards the contestants, they provide hints galore of an encore of success graphs from previous seasons. While the cute telly toppers Aamir Ali and Sanjeeda Sheikh show ample promise of doing a Hussain-Tina this year, Krushna could well be the source of high adrenaline dances a la Bakhtyaar. Hussain's succinct host act is welcome, while Tina is thankfully non-gushy. And as long as Rakhi Sawant is present, the show can be assured of some inane emotional tiffs to get the TRPs coming for its backstage episodes. Doubters on the presence of more unknown entities this season be rest assured, the concept is such that it has made celebs out of non-entities in previous seasons, so you never know who will script a career revival by the end of this season.

On the flip side, can we have a break from the same old sob stories of injuries. What used to happen after the show reached midway earlier has started replaying from day one - participant absences, forgetting steps midway and the practice related sob stories of injury. Everyone's being handsomely compensated to shake that leg and shed that extra sweat. So why complain? It just takes the fun off the game and if replayed as a habit might affect the TRPs too.

Verdict: A must watch for suckers of reality TV, NB3 lives up to the promise of the previous seasons along with a few good dances and dancers to watch out for.

http://www.screenindia.com/fullstory.php?content_id=17358