At home, since childhood my television viewership was rationed. It meant careful curation of shows. I’m partial to fantasy genre. During the National Doordarshan era where we did not have multiple channels to watch, I felt invigorated to watch educational, cartoon shows. Back then, screen time was highly restricted and was a strict regime set by mother.
By college time, the choice of cable channels ruled the roaster of viewership. Given that my choice of major was based on my interest, so with little effort finished my course. I had a lot of time and yet again stories meant that I had a choice of couch travelling.
I loved watching documentaries in Discovery Channel, Talkshows of The Harpo’s unit distributed, Hollywood movies, and American sitcoms and sleuth series that were handpicked with caution and parental approval.
In 1993, cable channel had infiltrated into the Conservative Southern households. This meant the growing exposure to series which were western in their themes. Back then, the channels screening for Indian audience meant, they had to decide based on the demography, as to which programs are appropriate for the region.
Between 1991-2003, I watched my shows on weekends, or during appa’s office hours, or when I was not occupied with studies or my work. There was a fine mix of Western and Indian influences in my viewership. Even today, these influences reflect in my natural choice in being stringent about what shows or series gets my time and attention.
Later, in 2004-2008, MediaCorp managed network of Channel News Asia and Vasantham Central were the most viewed. Vasantham Central News program that I watched had an interesting segment to build more contemporary vocabulary. Learning new Tamil words for English terms was very exciting for me.
Sometime during the afternoon, I watched Traditional Chinese theater where the actors wore elaborate masks and makeup like our Street Dramas. The Chinese musical instruments of lores played and the actors sang and moved like swans on the filmed stage. There was such fascination surrounding the plays that, even when I didn’t know the story or the language, I was willing to watch and enjoy.
In 2010, a chance viewing of a Korean drama ‘You’re Beautiful’ in YouTube made me interested in the Hallyu wave or Korean wave. Till date, I am willing to explore the Asian dramas with a pinch of my own discernment. I found the Indian Dramas either Hindi or Tamil were rather long spanning over 1000s of episodes.
After an exposure to Asian Drama, I found a pattern. The Korean dramas had 16 episodes standards, Chinese had 24 episodes, Thai dramas where an hour and over about 12 episodes at best.
Japanese drama were the best but too intense, they had lowest number at 10 episodes. K-Drama had long episodes too under Historical, Fantasy genres. But they mostly tend to go with 16 episodes and to create greater impact.
After being in such an environ of dramas finishing within a few months, I found Indian drama a little too tiresome spanning many years. The cyclic pattern of revenge and comeback leaves the audience in ennui more than interested.
The characters in Indian drama are over exaggerated and blown beyond expected reality. While Asian tendency are over exemplifying a singular emotion. Thus, making the audience to wonder, does this really happen in real-life?!!
I feel that, even if the drama is just half-an-hour slot, it would be best to have shorter form of Miniseries. I have watched one episode of Spanish drama, a miniseries again, courtesy my Spanish-speaking Latina Apartment manager.
My apartment manager brought me up to the latest episodes recap on the plot progress. I quickly caught on to the main theme of the drama. I was intrigued and could guess the plot progress with less additional help. Spanish and French is close to sounding sister languages. So, there are similar words for me to pick up the storyline. Of course, I learnt Hindi a language without any kind of help, so I had faith in my language immersing skills.
I watched a couple of British Miniseries, there were 4 or more parts with over 2-3 hours each. But there was a finite conclusion and never dragged on for inexplicable reasons such as the Indian series that need to have a longer format requirement.
No wonder, they are called miniseries! I liked watching Friends, Senfeld, Remington Steele, in my bachelor’s college days. The fact that the episodes were finished in that one session, and you can miss watching one or two episodes in the series. Missing some was allowed as the episodes are standalone format.
In Indian drama you can skip a few episodes, the plot wouldn’t have progressed and frozen scene of the overdecorated female antagonist’s villainous phase of intricately drawn revenge plot would stretch to many months.
Of course, the comedy shows in Tamil, these series came with standalone format but the quality of the jokes is slipping down the chart due to harsh humiliation of fellow artists. Then, the jokes are not above board.
The Dramas from Doordarshan regional time were taken from stage dramas and filmed. So, the jokes were all above board like Kathadi Ramamurthy team, Tulak Cho. The fact Cho Ramasamy’s comedy had some political nudge to it. It was on power with ‘Yes Minister’ show that DD showcased. Cho’s comedy was above board but with South Indian flavours to it but it was anchored on a single person Mr. Cho unlike the British Comedy “Yes Minister” or “Yes, Prime Minister.”
There were also Street theater performance like Yakshagana, Therukuthu, Villupattu, and cultural programs of different regions. The thing that makes it the best is that there was a good mix of culture and learning from the experience of viewership.
With opening of various other channels to watch in cable television, we still have the choice to pick our dramas with meticulously clear mindset. I find that when one watches the drama based on the understanding that time is precious and which one of the shows will get that time of yours.
So, these days, I have a lot of time with me and so I am bingeing unlike my past. The screen time is more than 12 hours and that scares me a lot. But the egging factor is that various stories that I get to see.
I have depleted genres like the fantasy, Comedy, Romantic Comedy, and Realism a lot. Between Kdrama, Cdrama, and Tdrama listing I might have seen quiet a collection. I have seen some dramas that had high villainy, which left me uncomfortable for days.
I, sometimes, feel that for drama’s sake negative and positive emotional reactions are blown out of proportion in the series. You end up questioning whether there is a mindset change happening in the process of overexposure.
After many decades of viewing dramas outside Indian themes, I feel the pressure of overuse of my screen-time. This could be almost a borderline addiction. Yet all the fantasy genre dramas are quite long, but not as long as Indian series.
Maybe Indian series faces a challenge of shift in viewership to K-Pop and K-Dramas, since they are short and appeals to general human sentimentality. But the audience in India are they ready for a change? That is the present question!
Our conservative south would rarely approve of any sudden change to cultural elements. So, it becomes even more important that the transition to a new format will take time. Fantasy was rarely showcased as a genre in Indian television annals and more of cable channels’ intervention.
Sadly, the rendering of the genre isn’t convincing enough for the Indian viewership. But surprisingly, the land of snake charmers (which we are not!) format centred around female and male snakes transforming into humans, to seek revenge clicks among the general audience.
Mythological genre works too! Since, we are pre-prepped for it. Our ancient history and Puranas are fine plots for long format dramas which spans a few years at the most. The Indian literature is vast and covers all form of emotion and diverse tastes.
The fact that though our television series are long, it also depicts our cultural roots in storytelling and the moral of story is that sometimes the character played by the human converts them into that screen character itself. So, an impressive Krishna (Indian God) would automatically colour the actor in his hues.
That is not the case at all. An actor plays the role described in the script and in some parts the actor might have convinced himself to be the character; but that, is not the real him.
The pressures of actor being asked to structure their life around the roles they play is pretty much harsh on them, especially in case of film stars. Tinsel city is brittle on its own, and to expect and to demand that the stalwart actors who played the specific role to be like actual real-life human being is a sad reality.
Another fact will be that screen artists are playing a role and to see it as such and no more is more important. I always felt that villains and Vamps are more human in real-life than the deluded heroes. If you don’t hold on to your sanity, then, the illusion becomes real for the actor or actress which is detrimental for their mental well-being.
So, I would say watching anything that has been enacted should be done with the critical view of whether that role was well-played or not, point of view and no more. It is best to leave the artist behind that silver screen and move with your life learning whatever lessons you can from the storyline or plot.
Itinerant Storyteller 