Ok, at the outset let me admit it that I am not smitten by SRK’s charms. To set the record right, nor am I a fawning fan of the Big B. To me these have been just names that I have been spared to spell in the past 12 years of my career. Also let me tell you, I have no interest whatsoever in who emerges the ultimate King of Bollywood. For me, films are what I pay for to watch when I cannot entertain myself otherwise.
So, when I watched the first episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati’s second coming on Monday night, a copy of the American show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, I did so with no love lost for either ‘stars’ and much out of curiosity rather than genuine interest (I missed Ocean’s Twelve on HBO for it!).
The media had been abuzz with the news of Shah Rukh Khan, as the new host set to take over from Amitabh Bachchan, for months. And I plead partly guilty to fanning the fire, but I also stand absolved by blaming the readers for wanting it.
However, the day of reckoning for SRK, I reckon, was not really worth reckoning. Far from bringing in his own style and panache - which he is known to inject into his films - to the show, The Man Touted To Be The King looked, and sounded, a tad too familiar. His mannerisms, perhaps sub-consciously, was not much different to his predecessor’s. Some discerning viewers, like I, perhaps, saw in SRK an overwhelming booming echo of the past.
And the contestant, an affable Bengali who had been on the Big B’s last show and who wanted the viewers to believe that this time his sole purpose at the contest was to hug SRK in the end, added the final nail to the artificiality of the whole show. So did SRK’s mis-pronounced rendition of a Bengali poem-song earlier on.
But, you need to give it to the man, he did it with panache – remember the same panache, the one he failed to inject into the show?
So on Monday night, the Computerji became Compaqda, and later Computerda. Wonder if he can keep it up when the rest of India parks itself in his ‘Hot Seat’.
In all, there was no spark to the show. Or maybe we were now looking for sparks of the Jade Goody-Shilpa Shetty kind. Maybe, because the KBC on Monday was too tame a show. The same set, similar setting, the same set of people in the audience – or so they looked in the shadows. There was a sense of familiarity, like seeing the same set of beautiful pictures over a thousand times.
Maybe, viewer expectations were too high. Maybe, a new format and a new host was too much of a risk for the channel. Maybe, we were expecting something more from The Man Touted to be the King. Maybe, we are right in doing so.
Comments
0 comment