Nostalgia: Hum Paanch

It has been said again and again that serials that have run well once before do not so well in their second innings. Many times, a serial has been very well-received earlier, and then years later, the serial makers come out with a desire to run the serial again, hoping that it will reach the same level of popularity. That is an event that does not happen, in almost all cases, the serial being introduced again does not work that well, and gets eventually withdrawn. Example of such serials are Karamchand, Hum Paanch, and a few others. There are many reasons for this, such as the choice set being limited when the serial first started appearing, but now choices are much greater. Further, why a serial becomes a hit is not exactly a well-defined science, and just because it was a hit earlier does not mean that the serial will still be a hit.
Hum Paanch started appearing on Zee TV in 1995 and ran for a couple of years, and was well appreciated. The story of a father with 5 daughters, each of them a specimen of a different kind, would make for each episode to have a new story. And to make things even more interesting, there is the photograph of the dead first wife hanging on the wall that speaks to him and only to him. No else knows about the conversation that he has with the photograph, although his second wife is very suspicious. Although the serial was a different sort of comedy, it could produce a lot of laughs when dealing with the normal travails of a middle-class family. The serial was one of the first made by the Ekta Kapoor-run Balaji Telefilms before it started specializing in saas-bahu serials.
Who were the principal characters ? Ashok Saraf plays the role of the struggling father Anand Mathur, who has a mind of his own, but it does not work much when against his daughters intentions. Priya Tendulkar played the role of his dead first wife who only speaks through her photograph. His daughters are:
- Meenakshi: The eldest, played by Vandana Pathak. She plays the role of a feminist and presents that outlook in her actions and statements.
- Radhika: The second eldest, Radhika was played by multiple people including Vidya Balan for a short while, Amita Nangia played the main part of the role.
- Sweety: The third daughter, Sweety was fascinated by Bollywood heroes and dreamed all the time about marrying them. Sweety was played by Rakhee Tandon.
- Kajal: The second youngest, she was the only who was the closest to a son. Playing a tomboy and speaking all the time about bhai-log, her presence on the serial made a huge difference. Her role was played by Bhairavi Raichura. If you needed to threaten or bully someone, then she would be the one to do so.
- Chhoti: The youngest. She would love to gossip and the role was played by Priyanka Mehra.
The role of the second wife, Bina Mathur was played by Shoma Anand; she would always side with her daughters even when Anand Mathur was fed up with something done by his daughters.
The serial was re-introduced in 2005 and was finally taken off in 2006. It never did catch on much in the second run.