|| Swapnil Joshi AT: from Gopala to Dwarakadheesh! - Page 4

Posted: 3 years ago

Originally posted by MagadhSundari



Lol I have a PhD in this subject derived from loooots of articles, interviews, and Twitter conversations, so please allow me to bore you with the details 😆 When Uttar Ramayan began, Ramanand Sagar got pulled into a looooot of court cases over what he did/didn't portray, and there was also a lot of political tension around airing "religious" content on a national channel. This was both financially draining and made it hard to get Shri Krishna on air even though RS had already begun working on it during Uttar Ramayan. So with the Dashavataar through VD's imprisonment pretty much ready in '89, they decided to start the show as straight-to-VHS and funded its continuation through preorders for the set (which was advertised as 26 volumes just because that's how many cassettes it took to cover Ramayan so they assumed they'd do the same). This went on from '90-92, with them sending subscribers an episode or two a month up until the phase in which Krishna is bound to the pillar and uproots the two trees. Then, by popular demand, Doordarshan lifted its ban on mythos and picked up the show in '93, but they put in on DD Metro/DD2 instead of DD National which reached only urban markets. This went on up until the Swapnil version of the Dwarika nirmaan track in '95, by which time the political environment and the channel's strategy changed so they decided to move it to DD National. BUT, since rural markets hadn't seen the show up to that point, there was demand to start it over from the beginning. By the time they reached the point where they had left off on DD Metro, RS had suffered health setbacks, Swapnil started his LL.B., and the junior Sagars had started working on a bunch of other shows which stretched the budget and led to them leaving the day to day execution of SK in wayyy lesser hands, hence the drop in quality (which keeps me from watching any of those later episodes to date). When the show hit 180 episodes (or something in that range), it hit DD's limit on how long they would air the same series, so it took another hiatus before it got kicked over to Zee TV for its final stretch (leading to another decline in the look and feel for those last 40-50 episodes). 

Knowing all of this has given me a bit of appreciation for the tenacity and perseverance that went into getting this show on air and overcoming obstacles to keep it going as long as it did, covering as much ground as it did, but as Janu said above--there will always be that sadness over what SK could have been, had it continued with the same leadership, cast, crew, care, and aesthetic that it had until the original end of Swapnil's run.

y

Thankyou for this detailed response. 

Its a miracle then that SK turned out to be so good even after so much of issues. 

RS had so much problems yet he made a marvellous show, that tells us how dedicated he was to his faith.

Sincere respect and honour for him


@VrishBhai it had nothing to do with actors supporting one or other party, it's about how secular a government wants to show themselves. 

Congress was against the airing of Ramayana Mahabharatha during lockdown too, for them it's undue importance to the religious mythology of one specific religion

Edited by FlauntPessimism - 3 years ago
Posted: 3 years ago

Originally posted by .Vrish.


One more question - was SK telecast on weekends, like Sunday mornings, or was it on weekdays?

Weekends Sunday 9AM-10AM on DD1 no idea about its timing on DD2 since we didn't have cable connections back then

Posted: 3 years ago

Originally posted by FlauntPessimism


y

Thankyou for this detailed response. 

Its a miracle then that SK turned out to be so good even after so much of issues. 

RS had so much problems yet he made a marvellous show, that tells us how dedicated he was to his faith.

Sincere respect and honour for him


@VrishBhai it had nothing to do with actors supporting one or other party, it's about how secular a government wants to show themselves. 

Congress was against the airing of Ramayana Mahabharatha during lockdown too, for them it's undue importance to the religious mythology of one specific religion



FP


Agree w/ you: Sagar Arts pulled off something great, given the obstacles it faced, including Ramanand-ji's own health issues


On the secular aspect of things, the Congress in 1987 happily had Arun Govil decked as Rama and Dara Singh decked as Hanuman campaigning for their candidate against VP Singh: this was done in (then) Allahabad, and despite that, their candidate lost.  And RSR was heavily Tulsidas based and showed everyone knowing that Rama was a god, so there wasn't even the pretense that the Congress was using a secular show.  Of course, they later had problems when Deepika and Arvind Trivedi ran for the LS on BJP tickets and won


RkS


Since you haven't seen the SDB part of the serial, one thing I can recommend - see the Mahabharat stretch of the serial.  I can't comment on the Gita, since I've not watched that, but the war was covered exponentially better than in BRC.  Only shortcomings - Satyaki didn't exist, which is strange for a Krishna serial, and second, they shuffled the sequence of events considerably - Drona died b4 Ghatotkacha, and the last 4 warriors who died were shown to die in this order - Karna, Shakuni, Shalya and Dushashan.  Only other annoying aspect to the war coverage - frequently taking the show to Dhritarashtra, Sanjaya and Gandhari, who were insufferable to watch.  As usual, SDB always seemed to overact, but Sandeep Mohan, who played Arjun, did a faaaaaaaarrrr better job than either Firoze Khan or Shaheer Sheikh

Edited by .Vrish. - 3 years ago
Posted: 3 years ago

Congress wasn't so pseudo secular till late eighties, they respected the feelings of each community in genuine way, it was only when BJP started projecting itself as Hindutvawaadi party and started getting some substantial wins (around late eighties and early nineties) that Congress changed stance to become Secular as tiled towards the other side. Don't forget the Puja of Ramlalah at the disputed site was started by Congress, immidiately after the infamous ShahBano case, so yes till then, Congress was talking for the emotions of both the major communities


The paradigm shift in Congress happened in92 when BJP highjacked the Ramjanmasthan issue which by then was nurtured by Congress, some pseudo intellectuals actually linked the mosque demolish with the over religiousness and glorious past being presented to citizens on TV. 

Congress then (a very suicidal step I must say) changed into a titled secularism model and started becoming more conscious to ensure that their actions are not being taken as religious support to majority. 

That's why while Mahabharata and Ramayana had no difficulties, SriKrishna and Dashavatar had to face huge problems.



About the war, I preferred the Arjun in show (forgot his name) over Firoz Khan-Arjun. Aside the Krishna Balram bonding during adulthood was way too cute. But as you said some facts were changed, I think they didn't even show Karna not in the war for first ten days

Posted: 3 years ago

Originally posted by .Vrish.


RkS


Since you haven't seen the SDB part of the serial, one thing I can recommend - see the Mahabharat stretch of the serial.  I can't comment on the Gita, since I've not watched that, but the war was covered exponentially better than in BRC.  Only shortcomings - Satyaki didn't exist, which is strange for a Krishna serial, and second, they shuffled the sequence of events considerably - Drona died b4 Ghatotkacha, and the last 4 warriors who died were shown to die in this order - Karna, Shakuni, Shalya and Dushashan.  Only other annoying aspect to the war coverage - frequently taking the show to Dhritarashtra, Sanjaya and Gandhari, who were insufferable to watch.  As usual, SDB always seemed to overact, but Sandeep Mohan, who played Arjun, did a faaaaaaaarrrr better job than either Firoze Khan or Shaheer Sheikh

I did see the SDB part of the serial. I just saw it once, when I first bought the DVDs. I just didn't rewatch it multiple times like I watched the earlier portion of the show.


I do agree about the Arjuna actor. He carried off the role pretty well, and I do remember liking some of the sequences showing during MB. I also remember that a lot of the actors overracted though (including SDB himself), which cut into my enjoyment of it, and it was dragged in lots of portions, but some scenes were genuinely enjoyable, and I felt the death of Abhimanyu was actually a little more accurately shown that other shows.

Posted: 3 years ago

FP


The Arjun actor was Sandeep Mohan.  Both he and the guys who did Yudisthir and Bhima did a good  job.  Nakul was miscast: he was the most handsome of the lot, but they made him look like a goon.  He should have swapped w/ the guy who did Sahadev.


Speaking of which, can someone create and populate the cast list for this show?  Also, a Help Desk thread?


Yeah, Karna was shown being visited by Krishna and Kunti after Drona's death, and before he became senapati.  When in fact all that happened after Krishna's visit to the Hastinapur failed to prevent a war


So for the Mahabharat stretch, Yudisthir, Bhima and Arjun, and even Abhimanyu did a good job.


Also, the serial somewhat whitewashed Drupad a bit, showing him  as opposing Sishupala.  Someone w/ that devotion would have treated Drona better!


However, all that said, the serial did a much better job on the war than BRC.  They showed warriors like Ghatotkach more often, and also fighting Alambush.  They showed Abhimanyu killing Duryodhan's son Lakshman.  They showed Ashwatthama's battles a lot, particularly him releasing narayanastra on the Pandavas after Drona's death.  But they were inaccurate in showing Bhima defeating him easily: that rarely happened.  I just wish they  had added Satyaki and Bhurishrava, then the war would have looked more complete.

Edited by .Vrish. - 3 years ago
Posted: 3 years ago

That was the only show to have shown Lakshman getting killed by Abhimanyu post which Duryodhan lost his temper. I loved that scene (although they didn't show Dusshashan's son being the one to finally kill Abhimanyu, but I guess that's because the showmakers feel it insulting to show that someone as great as Abhimanyu got killed in duel with someone as trivial as Dusshashan's son)

Others make it look like the whole objective of Chakravyu was to kill Abhimanyu

Posted: 3 years ago

There were also 2 days gap  b/w Bheeshma's & Abhimanyu's fall: I was disappointed that they didn't show  Arjun's battle w/ Bhagadatta.  That's when the latter used the Vaishnav astra on Arjun, and Krishna jumped up and absorbed it, otherwise it would have killed Arjun.  They wrongly showed that incident w/ Karna, instead of Bhagadatta

Posted: 3 years ago

I made a little something on the original last scenes of Swapnil in the show - dwaraka nirmaan and varnavat.

It's all because of Lola that we even have these scenes available. They're truly treasures for all of Swapnil's fans. ❤️


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