TV that’s lost the plot

Tired of watching reruns of American sitcoms on my cable network, I recently switched services and chose the deluxe package.

After 24 hours of waiting for the feed to be beamed into my living room, I was delighted when the Indian television stations started playing. There were 24-hour non-stop old and new Bollywood music videos, Indian reality television shows, sitcoms, movies and, the best part, news from India and Pakistan and a host of other countries whose languages I could not properly follow.

I caught up on the fact that this year, the shortage of rice was so bad in India that the government was importing it for the first time in 20 years. That wheat was going to be subsidised but not lentils. That the production of sugar was at an all-time low and the government was monitoring certain factories to prevent stockpiling. It was better than hearing the American stations debating about how low Obama had bowed in front of the Japanese emperor. I could relate to this kind of current affairs.

Of course, the music videos were a treat. I started to make a mental note of all the upcoming releases. There were the oldies too, an ode to my aunts and my mother and their hairstyles.

I even watched one of those 1990s Bollywood films, which brought back memories of friends laughing at the ridiculous lyrics and plot. It was Hero No 1 with Govinda, the original star of satire, dressed in orange and blue. He was considered passé when the film was released, but after a decade he was retro-cool again. It made me cherish the memories of a time gone by.

But the reality shows and sitcoms do not bear watching. Is this what opening up the market has done to Indian entertainment? There was angst, family drama, even comedy, but none of them seemed to resonate with what Indian life is like any more. AR Rahman, the Oscar-winning music director, told me during his recent visit to Abu Dhabi for the Middle East International Film Festival that bad plots were no longer tolerated in Indian films because of what the Indian audience was being exposed to, thanks to globalisation. Instead, he said, “those plots were playing out on television”. He was spot on. It was like a bad Eighties Bollywood film playing out in 13 parts on TV, while the recent films explored more relevant social topics such as terrorism and the recession.

Which all goes to say that there is very little on television, and a lot more promise in the movie theatres.