Make it quick

There was a time when we could sit in front of the television and watch a story through the beginning,middle and end,all within in an hour.

There was a time when we could sit in front of the television and watch a story through the beginning,middle and end,all within in an hour. Shows like Katha Saagar and Darpan gave us a new story,characters and even a different moral every day. Watch any show on television today and you go through three dialogues and a bucket of tears in every episode. At the end of it,you are left confused. So unless you religiously spend a few hours in front of the television daily,most of the shows are quite useless.

American and British television seems to have taken care of this dilemma of the not-so-regular television viewer by the umpteen numbers of shows that dont require you to block time in your diary every day in order to know how Anandi of Balika Vadhu reacted when she found out that her parents lost their house. The answer was the entry of the mini-series. Rome,Band of Brothers,Generation Kill and Carnival are just a few American mini-series that gained so much popularity.

Indian television was not far behind and tried to get the concept of short stories back with shows like Yule Love Stories,Star Bestsellers,Specials @10. In fact,these shows got on board famous directors like Madhur Bhandarkar,Anuraj Kashyap,Vikram Bhatt and Mahesh Manjrekar,but still managed to create no buzz. The American shows on the other hand are still repeated on television and are regular requests on the download circuits too.

In fact,these mini-series started to get so popular that film director Steven Spielberg is currently all geared up for his next television mini-series,The Pacific. The 10-part World War II series is being produced by Spielberg along with Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman for HBO.

The production value of the series in the West is mind boggling. The budget of The Pacific is US$150 million,which more than most Hollywood films. So the great visuals and snappy story line gives a big push for viewers to miss a couple of episodes of their regular shows and watch these better productions.

They treat these television series as movies. Its a great chance for new filmmakers. The same thing was tried in India with so many shows but unfortunately the audience didnt take to it. Maybe adding a few film stars could help. says short filmmaker Bejoy Nambiar.

Its also because Indian women get very attached to characters, explains Ashwini Dheer,writer and producer of shows like Lapataganj and Office Office on SabTV. Women love to gossip. These characters become a part of their life and they get pleasure in discussing their lives during their evening walks. I dont think they will be able to deal with new characters and stories every week.

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Actors on the other hand love the mini-series. It allows them to show off their acting prowess on the extremely huge scale of television without committing to show for years at an end. Madhur Bhandarkar liked my performance in Specials @ 10 and signed me up for a really good role in his next film Jail, actor Aarya Babbar tells us.

But looking at the high TRPs and the number of new dailies being churned out each day,it looks like the audience is content with one story being pulled along for months to an end. Few brave souls like SabTV try continuously to bring in newer and shorter stories on the TV circuit but it doesnt seem to have caught on.

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