Recently, after about five months of being away from any and every
kind of Indian serials, I had the rather inconvenient bad luck to be
re-introduced to the myriad characters and seemingly self-perpetuating
story lines. Needless to say, the stories don't seem to have moved
further by much, with characters still stuck in the conventional,
comfortable rut they have been in since the inception of the saga.
This made me compare our immortal Indian soaps to their Western counterparts (not that I haven't when watching the latter over the last few years) . Now, before I am bombarded with 'oh, but our serials have central to them aspects of our culture', 'we have boundaries we adhere to in real life which are reflected on screen' so on and so forth, let me say...I am well aware of the so-called 'cultural boundaries' and their impact and the repercussions too.[I will break up the various issues I have about these kinds of serials in later posts]
What I am trying to say is that once you watch something like say '8 Simple Rules to Dating My Daughter' or 'The Middle' or 'Everybody Loves Raymond' (to name a few from the last five years or so), you can very easily place yourself, no matter what country and 'culture' you belong to, in the shoes of characters from these serials. Why then don't we have a single serial of this kind produced in India?Why do we have the usual saas-bahu or jealous sisters-in-law or greedy relatives' nonsense repackaged and sold to us everyday? When, if ever, will we move away from these serials to the more interesting and lighter, even hilarious serials such as Dekh Bhai Dekh, Sarabhai v/s Sarabhai (a saas-bahu serial with a twist), Shriman Shrimati? It is safe to say that if we have been able to produce wonderful, non mind-numbing likable characters and serials of this kind before, we can have similar ones again. Right?
This made me compare our immortal Indian soaps to their Western counterparts (not that I haven't when watching the latter over the last few years) . Now, before I am bombarded with 'oh, but our serials have central to them aspects of our culture', 'we have boundaries we adhere to in real life which are reflected on screen' so on and so forth, let me say...I am well aware of the so-called 'cultural boundaries' and their impact and the repercussions too.[I will break up the various issues I have about these kinds of serials in later posts]
What I am trying to say is that once you watch something like say '8 Simple Rules to Dating My Daughter' or 'The Middle' or 'Everybody Loves Raymond' (to name a few from the last five years or so), you can very easily place yourself, no matter what country and 'culture' you belong to, in the shoes of characters from these serials. Why then don't we have a single serial of this kind produced in India?Why do we have the usual saas-bahu or jealous sisters-in-law or greedy relatives' nonsense repackaged and sold to us everyday? When, if ever, will we move away from these serials to the more interesting and lighter, even hilarious serials such as Dekh Bhai Dekh, Sarabhai v/s Sarabhai (a saas-bahu serial with a twist), Shriman Shrimati? It is safe to say that if we have been able to produce wonderful, non mind-numbing likable characters and serials of this kind before, we can have similar ones again. Right?
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