Race of the Gods (Part I)

Satellite television hasn’t killed off mythological and costume dramas. They are back with a bang on the channels

Indian television seems to be witnessing a revival of the grand epics and period dramas as channels unleash one show after another and wait for the blessings to pour down.

Take NDTV Imagine. The channel can thank Ramayan for its fortunes. That serial – though its effect is nowhere near the street emptying success of its predecessor on Doordarshan during the 1980s – seems to be single-handedly driving the channel. According to TAM data, Ramayan accounts for a 26 per cent share among NDTV Imagine’s 15 top programmes.

Then there are Sai Baba and Jai Ma Durga on STAR Plus, Raavan, Jai Ganesh and the old Ramayan on Zee TV.

Coming to period or fantasy, costume or period dramas, STAR Plus has Prithviraj Chauhan, Zee has Aladin and Naagin, 9X has Chanakya and Alif Laila, while NDTV Imagine has Dharam Veer and Raajkumar Aaryyan. Some of these are re-runs, while others are brand new remakes.

What is it about such serials that has made both brand new channels as well as old, established ones plump for them? Does the mythological work?

Well, it seems to.

Originally credited to Valmiki and Vyas respectively, there have been many versions of both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The most popular form of Ramayana is the Ramcharitmanas by Goswami Tulsidas, who wrote it in 1577. As entertainment evolved, the two epics came up on stage, on celluloid and finally on television.

During the 1980s, film producer Ramanand Sagar of Sagar Arts decided to reinterpret the Ramayana on television. Some years later, another film maker, BR Chopra, chose to redefine Mahabharata. Both serials were crowd pullers. They would bring the country to a standstill for an hour every Sunday. Those were the days when India was a single channel country. Encouraged by the success of Ramayan, Sagar went on to produce more than 15 mythological serials, including Shri Krishna and Luv Kush, both in 1989. His last venture was STAR Plus’ Sai Baba three years ago.

The 1990s brought in channels such as STAR, Sony and Zee. As these channels fought to get a foothold, mythological and costume dramas were given the go-by, but not entirely forgotten. Though satellite TV had more contemporary content, there were filmmakers like Dheeraj Kumar and Sanjay Khan who made their presence felt. While Khan is remembered for Tipu Sultan, Kumar got himself into the Limca Book of Records – till his model faded into oblivion after he switched from Doordarshan to satellite TV – for having produced the maximum number of mythological programmes. There seemed to be no place for the mythological on satellite TV.

Some 20 years after Ramayan and Mahabharat made their bow, and at a time when there are more than 250 channels in India, a new channel did the unthinkable. In January this year, NDTV Imagine launched itself with, guess what – Ramayan. And that too from the Sagar Arts stable.

Anand Sagar, the director of the new Ramayan and son of Ramanand, cannot understand the bewilderment. “Why not?” he asks, adding, “Ramayana needs to be retold and remade every decade. It’s been 20 years, and there’s a generation that’s grown up without watching the epic.”

Chandraprakash Dwivedi, of Chanakya fame, feels that mythologicals never really disappeared from TV screens. “Earlier there was a perception that mythologicals and historicals are downmarket and fit only for Doordarshan. With the realisation that they have some repeat value, channels have gone back to such programmes,” he explains.

According to Dwivedi, everything is fair in the war of the TVRs. Starting with a TVR of below 1 (CS4+, HSM, as per TAM data), Ramayan on NDTV Imagine reached a peak of 3.19 within a month, taking the channel to No. 3 position behind STAR Plus and Zee TV in Week 10 of 2008.

That made the competition sit up and the floodgates of mythology, costume drama, fantasy and historical/period programmes opened up. In February, STAR called a press conference to announce Mahabharata to be produced by Bobby Bedi and to be directed by Dwivedi. While that will take at least six months, the network always had a channel for its reruns, STAR Utsav. Hence, Katha was announced, where Sagar Arts’ earlier productions, Ramayan, Shri Krishna and Sai Baba, are being shown. The TVRs for on air serials, meanwhile, keep rising even for costume dramas.

Naagin – Vaadon ki Agni Pariksha on Zee TV, on February 8, marked its highest TVR of 5.12. Two days later, Prithviraj Chauhan on STAR Plus had a rating of 4.86. Both these serials have an average rating of 4. Anything above 2 in the general entertainment (GEC) space is considered to be good. Similarly, Jai Ma Durga and Sai Baba, both on STAR Plus, have an average TVR of 2 and 4, respectively. Aladin – Jaanbaaz Ek Jalwe Anek, on Zee TV has had a consistent TVR of above 2. However, not all serials in this genre are doing as well. Raavan on Zee TV has a rating of above 1, while Jai Hanuman on Sony has simply lost it with ratings just above zero.

Besides Ramayan, NDTV Imagine has two costume dramas, Dharam Veer and Raajkumar Aaryyan, both of which aren’t doing well. There are various reasons why channels come up with such serials despite the costs involved. (Mythologicals and historicals need a lot of research work, detailing, costume and set designing. The production costs can be thrice that of general family dramas.)

Even news channels have been trying the mythological route. Zee News used the Ram Setu controversy to come up with programmes like Mil Gaye Ram, which tried to trace the path Hanuman and Ram took and find traces of the demon king Ravan in Sri Lanka. IBN7 had programmes like Swarg ki Seedhi (which traced the Pandavs’ path to heaven) and Yahan Aana Mana Hai (a documentary on the village Malana in Himachal, supposed to be the oldest democracy in the world).

Was it some such reason that gave NDTV Imagine its ‘brilliant’ idea? Shailja Kejriwal, executive vice-president, content, NDTV Imagine, would have been “happy to claim such brilliance”, with such great timing. “But it is not true,” she admits. Mythologicals, according to her, were the lowest common denominator in the channel’s scheme of things. “We wanted to reach every C&S home with something familiar, yet not boringly familiar. They would not come to NDTV Imagine to see yet another soap. Every SEC, male, female, child, old or young, is familiar with Ramayana, but we were not sure how familiar they were with the details. Fortunately for us, nobody had done it for a long time,” she says.

Also, as a team, they felt that there were a lot of negative vibes around, whether it was news channels or newspapers, which are all about rape, murder, death and destruction, and loot and beating of people. “Even on GECs, people were getting into storylines around kidnapping, scheming and extramarital affairs. Ramayan was a reaction against it,” says Kejriwal.

Television goes to all SECs now and is not a preserve of the upper middle class as it once was. Channels are looking to revive the old tales to reach this wider audience. BR Films, too, is in talks with channels, and according to chief executive officer Sanjay Bhutiani, there will be at least one mythological serial from his production house on each of the top channels. He says that many channels had approached them to remake Mahabharat, but he refused.

“Mahabharat is a part of the Guinness Book of World Records with a TRP of 99. It can be done in a better way, but as content, it still sells on home video all over the world,” he says. BR Films plans to come up with a two-part six-hour movie on Mahabharata by the end of 2010. It will also go into production with a period fiction film, Mitti (set in the backdrop of 1857), in early 2009.

Bhutiani reveals that the production house has ideas ranging from the concept of Hinduism and the origin of life, and something on popular gods and icons and people who have been a part of Indian culture.

But how much is too much?

To be continued...