Horrorscope

Sahara One’s one-hour horror band on weekdays at 11 pm. While filmmaker Vikram Bhatt,who is known for his

fascination with the horror genre,is providing creative inputs for Haunted Nights,Rajiv Mehra,of Office Office fame,is helming the other show,Yeh Kali Kali Raatein.

Speaking about his involvement with Haunted Nights,Bhatt points out that this show is different from his last TV outing Anhoniyon ka Andhera,also a horror show.

“Haunted Nights follows a different format; it is a Monday to Friday serial and there’s a new story every week. Also,it is spookier and scarier than my earlier show,” he says. The show will feature other established TV actors,apart from Desai. Shilpa Saklani,Manini De Mishra and Saakshi Tanwar are some of the names who will be playing the leads in subsequent stories of Haunted Nights.

Yeh Kali is Mehra’s first attempt at making a horror show. “I wanted to do something different this time and horror is a challenging genre. So it made sense to work on this show. We are not looking at getting the viewer to jump out of his chair but the idea is to surely entertain and send a chill down the spine,” he explains.

But won’t the back-to-back telecast of the shows dilute the fear factor? Suresh Mishra,Assistant Director,Sahara One Media and Entertainment Ltd,doesn’t think so. “Our channel has always tasted success with horror shows and we wanted to replicate that. Besides,we felt that horror is one subject that has not been tapped to its fullest potential. This realisation made us come up with a one-hour slot for the shows,” he notes,adding that the

reason behind the late night timing

was the fact that they wanted to reach out to more people,particularly the male audience.

However,the shows’ biggest USP,claim both Bhatt and Mehra,is its

ability to break up what they call a

short film into five half-hour episodes. “This gives us the flexibility to flesh out the story and thereby do justice to it,” adds Mehra.