ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 - Inaugural Show

The one thing that strikes you everytime you watch one of these - and by these I mean live televised events involving song and dance - that the Americans are so good at this and so much better than probably any other country. Not just countries like India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or Pakistan. But even the U.K and other European nations.

There is a certain awkwardness and sloppiness that we excuse ourselves for because of the nature of the massive undertaking that anything like this ultimately is. I mean, no what who it is, there really isn't anyone who does this for a living. There aren't that many One-Time Only Shows that are watched by hundreds of millions of people in a year. For most of the people organizing the show it is probably a once in a lifetime thing. So the rarity of the occasion itself is so much more added pressure on the organizers.

Compare it with the way the Americans do their Oscars or Sporting events and there is a certain flair that the organizers display in the way they roll it out. Is it because they organizers have more experience doing this? Have they just been doing it longer than anyone else? Is there an actual trade that has grown out of this? Grand Multi-million dollar Mega Event organizers?

Whatever it is, it is painfully clear that Bangladesh is just as clueless as India.

Our imagination doesn't seem to be able to reach beyond the perfunctory, sad-sack dance routines by hundreds of pawns - uninspired choreography is never turned awesome by multiplying the number of people doing the routine. The random setting off of fireworks that has nothing to do with what's going on. Signing up a has-been rock-act that has as much to do with cricket or even a cricketing nation as Rakhi Sawant has to do with discretion.

A certain military monotonous regularity begins to creep in almost immediately as the first "Stadium Anthem" starts to blare from a sound system that is manned by a Wedding or Puja DJ on hire and not by a professional Sound Engineer who knows how to do Open-Air Concerts like the back of her hand. As if somehow the organizers have managed to extract every gram of entertainment out of the show and kept it hidden in an undisclosed location.

And I know as an organizer of a country that is not normally seen on the World stage, you want to showcase something that is unique and iconic about your culture and people - But no matter how stretched you are, ideawise, budgetwise or any otherwise, at some point somebody has got to have thought that this may not make good television and therefore has to be scratched from the evening's programme.

India makes exactly the same mistake everytime it gets a chance. It's as if we've built a box inside the box and are doing all our thinking from inside of it.

Truth Love Cash 2 - Episode 11

If there is anything on indian television right now that is more boring than listening to Yudi, the host of Truth Love Cash 2, say "But... in my hand is a Cue Card... and on this Cue Card are some special instructions... and now I'm going to look at the Cue Card... and read the special instructions... in the Cue Card." I have yet to encounter it. And for the sake of my meagre sanity I hope I never do.

It's physically painful to watch this show unfold, as each episode is punctuated and that exactly what Yudi's monologues resemble - punctuations - on a show that is not very racy to begin with.

Every episode begins with Yudi explaining the rules and other information about a task or game or pasttime (to be accurate) that the crew have obviously come up with between dinner and the first yawn the night before. And I find a voice inside me going "Get the hell on with it already!". The over-complicated and unnecessarily complex instructions are inversely proportional to the actual watchability of the task.

Then once this task is over - probably the only highlight of the show simply because the rest of the content is so dry and uninvolved - we are back to our dear host, Yudi who then takes all the time in the world to find the most laborious and long-winded way to tally up the score and announce the updated cash winnings for the couples. "Get the hell on with it!"

Then the rest of the episode bumbles its way to the ubiquitous "Dumping Ground" where again we meet the man and watch him extract as little juice possible from what could be a mildly interesting segment - given that it is the climax of the episode.

Yudi's handling of the show is marked by his lack of charm, total absence of charisma and a monotonous, staccato delivery of excruciatingly badly written content peppered liberally with completely misplaced pauses.

Conclusion:
This episode saw Vinit leave, but the show found a way to bring him back and keep him and Aastha - probably the most boring contestant of the lot - together for one more go at the Grand Finale.

Can't Wait.

Splitsvilla 4 - Episode 11

Dushyant finally gets to be the king of Splitsvilla in an episode where the primary kingmaker task was the wittily labeled "Hug of War".

The two most interesting plays tonight were both from Manish's Qabila.

Archana thinks on her feet and immediately upon losing the two-on-two tug of war to Dushyant and Pooja (in which she was paired with Manish, obviously),  really has a go at Pooja in the post-match session. She keeps this up in the Bajate Raho (who comes up with these anyway?) session and ensures that Manish - clueless as ever - decides to save her because she is in Pooja's crosshairs. The fact that Archana adamantly placed herself there seems to have passed him by.

The second and even more spectacular play, not only for its daring but for the sheer ability to think-on-the-go was Payal. As soon as Pooja picked her as one of her two nominations for the dumping zone Payal takes her on and implies that she has been exchanging flirtatious looks with Dushyant and upon being helpfully prodded by Nikhil giggles that she has a crush on him. And with that Payal proves herself to be a worthy player - finding herself in a very tricky situation she goes balls out. This is the sign of a seasoned and confident player.

Now all she has to do is follow it through and bring Dushyant around in their one-on-one date. Dushyant is naive in the ways of Kinghood and statecraft and having been in the boonies for all season may not be able to resist Payal, who is cornered and will bring her A-Game.

My money is on Payal.

Roadies 8 (The Auditions) - Raghu and Rajiv are back.

I've heard the phrase "Back with a vengeance" many times but rarely have I seen it come true so vividly as it has with the return of Raghu and Rajiv to the Roadies franchise that they fathered (they are brothers so does that make it weirder than the fact that they are of the same sex? Probably.).

MTV and the Balded Brothers have figured out a way to make things work for both sides which has led to the gruesome twosome being back in charge and thankfully keeping random MTV "Star ban gaya Chipkoo" - Cyrus, Nikhil and that other Cyrus out of the show.  Anything is better than watching Nikhil try to intimidate someone. Or for that matter, watching Cyrus, or that other Cyrus try to be funny.

It does seem though that MTV gave up a lot of ground on their side of the negotiating table - going by the frantic disclaimer ticker that squeals across the screen distancing themselves from the content  - rude, disrespectful, offensive comments delivered by the judges to the Roadies hopefuls in what is supposed to be a form of tough love or initiation or ragging or test.

Anyway, to return with a little less vengeance to the point of this post, I notice that R&R (this is a good label and I'm going to stick with this so you don't get distracted) have quite a lot of bile stored in them in the way they have a go at the lambs that are brought before them for their weekly ritual humiliation also known as the "Roadies Auditions".

This isn't like Roadies 6 or the ones before it, where you could tell R&R were, underneath it all, sincere and real about it. Something seems to have snapped - and this more in Raghu than in Rajiv - and they now seem to be actually enjoying what they are dishing out and there somehow a sense that they are acutally "losing it" on camera than they did before. It's revealing a mean and vicious streak that probably doesn't belong in what they are supposed to be doing.

Earlier, the confrontations (although Beat-down or Take-down would be more appropriate) used to develop organically during the process of questioning. The interviewee would say something or reveal a certain side to their personality or mental make-up that would grate R&R and that would provoke them enough to have a full-fledged go at the unsuspecting goat. Random interviewee would somehow stumble into a through process that suggested that "women belong in the kitchen" / "women shouldn't wear revealing clothes" / "women shouldn't earn more than men" and it would turn these two into blithering women's lib advocates who then tried to educate this boy on 21st century gender politics by screaming his roof brain off. The method was questionable, but their intentions probably weren't so much.

But this time around, there's something about it that just makes it seem - what's the word - programmed. The contestants are chosen because they have revealed a character flaw that will make good Roadies Audition footage. R&R know when the goat walks in what and how they are going to steer the interview and this makes it a lot more manipulative, ruthless and sociopathic in nature.

It's somehow as if R&R have said, "Ok, so this is what people enjoy most about us in our Auditions shtick, so we are really going to lay it on thick."

Sort of like, how the producers of Bindass's "Dadagiri" must have figured, lets just try and reverse engineer the DNA of Roadies and create a clone. A process they seem to have repeated with "Date Trap" (derived from Channel V's wildly fun and original show "Dare 2 Date").

It just smells synthetic and artificial and reeks of TRP hunger and desperation that is not nice to see in a show that enjoys the kind of public and youth hysteria that Roadies obviously generates - just look at the thousands who turn up every year at every city hoping to get selected.

Bigg Boss - Season 4, Finale

So Bigg Boss wraps up this season having announced its first female winner last night. This was the first season that I saw and I watched every episode except the one in which Bunty got evicted. My first thoughts, when comparing it with its UK original and the U.S. Franchise (Big Brother in both countries and pretty much all over the english-speaking world) was that the contestants seemed to have been picked from a much smaller pool here. 

Everywhere else part of the fun lay in watching a motley crew of everyday people, like me and you presumably, in those situations and how we, as mildly recognizable "types", coped with the various trials and tests inherent in the nature of the show. Bigg Boss, instead took to picking people who had some amount equity in the public square. There were television starlets, people who had achieved a certain amount of fame (or in a couple of cases infamy) in their chosen field and of course a subset of all these included people who were looking to use this as a platform to launch their careers in Bollywood.

Why is this? Did the producers decide that audiences would not be interested in watching people like them? Ordinary, office-going, housewiving people?

As for the finale, I'm sure there are many who are just relieved that a boorish, loutish, conniving, manipulative, risible, muck-racking, delusional specimen like Dolly Bindra came nowhere near the award.

Of the four finalists, I must say that I'm pretty happy with Shweta Tiwari winning the whole thing. She arguably faced the most trying time (her first confrontation with Dolly Bindra in the living area being the highlight) among all contestants and she rarely engaged in the pastimes with which all other house-members were keeping themselves busy.

And considering this is an audience selected winner its also heartening to see that the one who had the most evolved model of the star-fan dynamic ultimately won. She referred to her voters as "chahnewales" or people who liked her. Not her "fans" which presumes a certain adulation and devotion and which far less accomplished people were going on about. And her use of the word "niswarth" (selfless) is a pretty good way of evaluating a situation where people who make do with far less and were voting for a contestant to walk away with a fair amount of rupiya.

Ripping Vir Das

Indian Stand-Up should roll its shutters down, bubblewrap the furniture and leave on the morning flight because if Vir Das is the best Star World can do for a Year-End Special then I don't hold out much hope for the vocation.

Not only were the attempts at humour lame, pathetic and of a nature that may not find many takers even late in the evening at a certain out-of-the-way college cultural festival, but the insufferable delivery of stale patter that seems to be his fatal flaw makes me certain that of all the things Vir Das should have persevered at, a career in Stand-up is not one of them.

He has no style, jokes that needed to be on life-support to begin with fell flat for lack of talent in telling them, no pacing or timing or any of the other minutae that less amateur practitioners of the trade concern themselves with and his air of faux-humility borders on the immodest. I am alarmed that so many think so much of him that he feels the need to add humility to his posturing.

Worst joke ever: While labouring over a routine about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's numerous adopted children, he says how the Namibian kid might react to their good looks when he grows up and posit that he (the Namibian) was either adopted or they (Brad and Angelina) have had extensive cosmetic surgery. Is there something about this child that we don't know (like he is especially unattractive) or is it just taking off from the idea that being Namibian (and therefore in possession of African blood, genes and physical characteristics) he is automatically to be considered ugly?

Ha! I get it now, Vir. You are racist and you don't even know it!

Tees Maar Khan vs Koffee With Karan

So I was wondering how the Farah Khan / Shah Rukh Khan falling out would play out on Koffee With Karan (KWK) and with yesterday's episode which had Shah Rukh Khan on it we seem to have a clear idea of how things have been played.

Farah's appearance on KWK was notable primarily because of the open hostility directed toward her by Karan. Firstly, the digs on her weight (this may not be topical as for most Indians, as I'm sure it is with Karan, to speak about a woman's weight may just be everyday roof-brain chatter, even though her profession or associated activities have nothing to do with it and do not affect her performance of them.) and then during the portion where they screened for the guests (three film directors) clips of their critics, she was the only one who got a critic who was not complimentary of her.

So we knew when the episode was halfway through, where Karan stands on the issue.

And yesterday, we saw Shah Rukh at various points in the interview mention -

1. How he is without friends (with an urbane irony that is probably one of the positive rub-offs of spending so much free time in the U.K.)

2. How he values his friendship with Karan.

3. He also sought to clear himself of the sin of not picking up calls (something that the two of them along with Farah in an earlier season had laughed about when things were good between them) on his cell phone.

Farah, on the other hand seems to validate the old saw about being wary of a scorned woman, if the little I've seen of Tees Maar Khan is anything to go by. Watch the title song and try to connect how it may be read as a thinly veiled take-down of the King Khan.

"Tees maar khan ke fans usse aadha Robinhood maante hain

Kyunki woh ameeron se leta toh hai par gareebon ko deta kuch nahin"

(His fans saw him as a halfway Robin Hood.

For though he looted the rich (read Producers and Advertisers) he didn't give to the poor.)

"Apne chahne walo ke liye Tees maar khan ne ek khaas sandes bheja hai
Tawaif ki lutt ti izzat bachchaana
Aur Tees maar khan ko qaid karna oye dono bekaar hai"

(Modeled on the famous Don line about "Don ko pakdna mushkil hi nahi...")

"Phir bhi chala jab uska charm

Sab sab ka ho gaya kalyan"

Which is to say that although he was running the biggest con-job this side of the Euphrates, his charm was all it took to keep everyone happy.

And just to make sure that there's no confusion the movie has Salman Khan making a guest appearance  (no one in their right mind will suspect Aamir or Saif in this context)

Here we go

Just a post to start off things. To make sure this doesn't become a mission statement or something equally dreary I'm going to keep things short. So here's the premise for this blog

I will post (anonymously) observations and generally hold forth on things I see on television. These will primarily be concerned with content generated in India and by Indians but will probably include international programming (mostly American and British as available on channels like Star World, AXN, FX, Discovery Networks and BBC Entertainment) every now and then. Also the nature of this content will tend to be entertainment as opposed to news.

So with that lets get going.