Sawaal Dus Crore Ka — Why was Big B laughing tonight?

All of you who saw the one-hour contest will know why. Imitation may be the best form of flattery but copycats not only pale in comparison, they stand the danger of infringing copy’right laws. Zee, as critic and veteran journalist Amita Malik said on a late night telephone call, could be sued for duplicating KBC. Everything but questions.

Those ranged from the sublimely simple to ridiculously obscure: “How many times does A occur in January?” and “Who according to the Maharaja of Holkar(???) was the king’ of outdoor games?” Not that KBC was a mastermind but this is one question Amitabh asked: “If your kitchen sink has a leak, who will you call?” A contest between dumber and dumber still.

But let’s begin again. Anupam Kher was nice and nervous. Co-host Manisha Koirala was white (in a lace-looking confection) and wan. Besides, setting off Kher’s grey-black suit, her role was indeterminate. Was she there as decoration? For her beautiful smile? To repeat each question in English even though it came up on the screen in text? Or was it because the producer of the show, Gajendra Singh, specialises in programmes with two anchors (Antakshari and Sa Re Ga Ma ) ?

Everything got off to a bad start. The first thing you noticed were the sets of SDKK — the lighting, the seating arrangement, the scoring pads, the cheque book, etc — were lifted straight from KBC and dumped down SDKK.

There were 21 contestants (why so many?) in a lit up arch of cages. Of these, three were chosen for the Monopoly kiski round. At this stage, they were gifted a gift: a gold coin, worth Rs 10,000, Kher informed us, adding rather rudely but entirely truthfully that the contestants had begun to make money already. And we were barely minutes into the show.

Well, it took 10-12 minutes before Vaishali answered enough questions correctly to get her to enter the money zone. Until now, the chief difference between SDKK and KBC had been the number of aspirants and the fact that Kher and Koirala had been standing on their feet for so long.

Now they were seated in KBC lookalike chairs. It was time for Kher to do his Bachchan impersonation by asking kind questions about her father who was in the audience. Manisha pitched in with a few o’s. When Vaishali revealed that she had a 14-month old baby, she exclaimed:“A 14-month-old baby? Oooooooooh!”

The object of the quiz, in case we forgot to mention it, was to answer questions correctly(!). Each time you did so, a 0 was added to the 1 till you reached the magic figure of Rs 10 crore. Figure it out for yourselves, I’m the critic, not a mathematician.

There were, yes, three helplines called Trump Cards: Bring a Brain (as opposed to picking one?), Clue for you and the Joker. The joker permitted a contestant to choose a question from a subject of their choice in case they didn’t like the one Anupam asked them. At least, that’s how it sounded… but the rules were quite complicated.

No more so than the viewers’ chance to win a prize: if the first (four?) digits of your copy of TV World (Zee’s monthly TV magazine) match our first four digits…blah, blah, blah. Did someone say something about lotteries, gambling and other malpractices?

Back in the hot seat, Vaishali is doing well. The zeroes are adding up for her. Anupam is busy freezing…brrrrrr. He’s returned to his Bachchan mode: “Pakka? Soch liya? Vichar kar liya?…achchha freeze kar dete hain…”

Maybe, to be fair to him, he knew the cloth didn’t fit his suit. He stumbled, he faltered: “(whether) your question is right or wrong we will see…”

And maybe that is a fitting note to end upon. Sawaal Dus Crore Ka didn’t have a clue or answer to KBC.