| Lavish sets. Garish costumes. Stilted, formal dialogues. Little wonder that none of the characters ever seem to belong to any of the palatial bungalows they occupy in our soaps, nor to the implausible plots they tread. While Indian television would love to brag that it's come a long way since Hum Log in the 1980s, its soaps, even the latest entrants, adopt a pace, style and setting more appropriate to Hindi films of the 1950s. Women and men wear incongruously ridiculous clothes even when lounging at home, the women sport jewelry like there's no tomorrow, and hardly a dialogue seems spontaneous. Take Sahara One's newest baby, Solhah Singaar, for instance. In its entirety, it's as impeccable and as boring as any of its predecessors. Pretty, mournful mothers laden with baubles, a stern white silk clad granny, an adulterous father with a seductive vamp in his closet, it has all the ingredients that would hook any housewife.
All it lacks is spontaneity. Loud sound effects help where subtle dramatics could have shown grief, and the father, played by Anuj Saxena, died a noisome death in a hospital, complete with garish music to denote grief, surrounded by mother, wife, mistress et al. | Constrast this with even a mediocre show like Sons and Daughters that runs on Star World. It's a regular family drama, but its camera angles, the apparent spontaneity of actors' movements and subtle expression of emotions makes it an easy view. Just like in Friends, where the characters indulge in routine activities like slamming a fridge door, or pouring coffee or just sniffling into a tissue - all while the story continues uninterrupted. Or a Desperate Housewives, where the leads routinely come out of their houses to empty garbage cans or trip over misplaced baggage in the corridors. These may not be key to the success of a soap, but they lend a distinct air of naturalness that's so absent in our soaps, forever grappling with the bigger business of adultery and domestic hostility. When was the last time you saw Parvati pouring herself a glass of water in the kitchen or Prerna doing, or even supervising, her laundry? One show that comes close to being spontaneous is Zee's Jab Love Hua. The screenplay flows naturally, the leads have gotten into the skin of playing villagers, and you can actually spot them feeding cattle and washing their hands with copper tumblers after meals, even when the conversations are on. | http://www.indiantelevision.com/special/boxpopuli/y2k6/nov/b oxpopuli26.htm |
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