Tele-Talk

Flop showHarmanand Joshi who produces the serial Ullanghan being directed by Basu Chatterjee held a bash at Hotel Moti Mahalin suburban M...

Flop show
Harmanand Joshi who produces the serial Ullanghan being directed by Basu Chatterjee held a bash at Hotel Moti Mahalin suburban Mumbai. It was quite surprising because normally a party is thrown before a serial goes on air, but Ullanghan premiered on DD1 five weeks back replacing Captain Vyom. Of course, according to Joshi, the serial is selling well 8212; it already has five sponsors. Strangely, no actors, not even the ones who appear in the serial, turned up. What8217;s more and worse, even director Basu da was not to be seen!

Shattered dreams
Ashok Pundit must be pretty upset these days. Last year his serial Hanste Khelte was terminated due to low viewership. But he got a fresh lease of life when he got his serial Tere Mere Sapne onto Zee. It started out on Mondays 9.30 pm and was doing well in terms of TRPs. But then it was shifted to 10 pm and next to 10.30 pm. Now it is being aired at 11 pm on Saturday night. One can8217;t understand why. A good tear-jerker story with an impressive star cast of Aruna Irani, Manohar Singh, Ifran Khan, Kiran Joneja, Anoop Soni and Amit Behl deserves better.

Ru-ba-ru is singing
The chat show celebrated its 200th birthday with melody queen Lata Mangeshkar last week. In the two-part show, Mangeshkar tells Rajiv Shukla about her life, sister Asha Bhonsle and the music directors she worked with. President K.R. Narayanan, prime ministers I.K. Gujral, Deve Gowda and Atal Bihari Vajpayee have been some of the other personalities who have visited the sets of Ru-ba-ru during its long run. The chat show also crossed the border and did a series of interviews with Benazir Bhutto, Imran Khan and Nusrat Fateh Ali, among others. For their birthday they decided to chat up Mangeshkar; in the future, they promise viewers guests from Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Drop Out
B.P.Singh8217;s detective series CID on Sony is making news. The reason is because Ashutosh Gowarikar who stars in the lead role as a CID officer is out of the serial. There are different rumours making the rounds but we contacted him and found him very cool. He was only too eager to clarify that there was no controversy and that it was a mutual understanding because he has started working on his new film. His last film was the Aamir Khan starrer Baazi which he had directed, but it crashlanded at the box office. There is no problem at all. I8217;m directing a film which should go on floor by the end of this year. So I8217;ve started working on the script which needs a lot of time and I want to concentrate completely on that8221; says Gowarikar.

Shooting a shootout
Bazm-E-Kashmir DD1 is one focussed serial. The camera is always trained on events in the Valley. And two weeks back, the crew of the show got a chance to shoot the first live encounter in Jammu and Kashmir. Producer-director of the series Aparna Katara has been fascinated by Kashmir for a long time. And her aim is to highlight life in the Valley through the programme. 8220;When the security forces in the Valley mentioned an encounter, my crew jumped at the opportunity,8221; Katara says. 8220;They were there, right in the middle of heavy fire, filming. It is the first time that an encounter has been captured live on film.8221;