Hindi TV Serial - Diya Aur Bati Hum - Sandhya exposes bribery, hunting for the culprit

This is the last chance for Sandhya. She has already gone through 2 chances that Bhabho gave her, and 2 of her matkas where broken thus giving her only one chance for reaching her ambition of joining the IPS and becoming a police officer. This last chance is if she wins a contest called SBC (Sabse Bada Champion). To the surprise of everyone in the family, Emily also wanted to take part in the show since this would give a chance for her to win some money (and this would replace the money that Mohit lost in the chit fund). There was some apprehension about whether she would be able to attend, but in the end, Bhabho allowed her to attend the contest as well, and to some extent, Bhabho would rather Emily won the show, since she does not want Sandhya to win the show and go for a career in the IPS.
The show has now started, and there was some surprise about the fact that 2 members of the same family entered the show. The show took the entrants through some round of questions, and there would be people eliminated in the various rounds. In the first round, Sandhya did great and topped. On the other hand, Emily barely scraped through. However, in the next round, where the contestants had to convince a large number of people in a movie hall to go with them, Emily won the round. Now things were getting tense. It was this time that Mohit wanted to make sure that Emily won, and he found that his old friend, Manoj is a part of the show, and he manages to get Manoj to come and give him answers for the forthcoming round.
In the next round, Sandhya and Emily are in one round where they have to select an article, and there they have to show between a rope and a tissue roll. Emily has been told that the roll is the correct item, but Sandhya insists on the rope, and it turns out that the rope was indeed the answer, Manoj had mistook rope for roll.
However, soon after Sandhya smells something wrong, while in the meantime Manoj is trying to get the laptop of Abhimanyu, so that he can find the answer. He finally manages to get hold of the laptop, but in the meantime Sandhya is suspicious of Manoj and follows him, and then she manages to get hold of his phone and shows it to everyone, thus showing that he had been helping somebody. Everybody is shocked that Manoj was trying to subvert the show, and they decide to hold off the contest proceedings till they find the name of the participant who was getting help from Manoj. And they all praise Sandhya for her attempts in this regard.
On the other side, Meena is starting to have motherly feelings towards Mishri, who is actually her daughter, and tried to get close to her, but Daisa stops her from doing son. And then the precap for an upcoming episode shows that Meena and Chavvi will have a argument where Meena will reveal many things that Chavvi did, and Bhabho hears all those.

Hindi TV Serial - Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa (season 6) - A new season, with new stars

Jhalak Dikhla Laa Jaa is the Indian version of the American reality show, Dancing With the Stars. It typically takes stars who are not supposed to be experienced dancers and couples them up with an experienced professional partner of choreographer, and the combination is supposed to perform dances of different styles, going week by week and with a star getting eliminated along the way, until it reaches the finale where a winner is chosen. The winner of last year, Jhalak Dikhhla Ja, Season 5, was Gurmeet Chaudhari. The series is happening on the Colors channel and started on June 1, 2013.

The show is hosted by the pair of Manish Paul and Kapil Sharma. Every year, there is a struggle to ensure that the judges are bigger celebrities, although judges such as Remo D'Souza have also made a lot of name for themselves through various dance programs on TV, through being the judges on these various shows, and also on other shows where they become the master of a team and teach the contestants on how to do a dance and perform on the show based on this dance. The biggest celebrity star judge this time is Madhuri Dixit, with Karan Johar being another star judge and Remo D'Souza being the third judge.

The contestants this time are from a wide cross-section, although like very year, the biggest section of contestants come from TV, and are typically TV actresses, with some of them looking to make a name for themselves again while others such as Drashti Dhami are already there on TV currently and have made a name for themselves.

The contestants are:

Suresh Menon - Comedian - Eliminated already

Krishnamachari Srikkanth - Eliminated already (excellent former cricketer, but no match for the others when it comes to dancing)

Sumanth and Sonali - These are the young winners of India's Got Talent Season 4

Ekta Kaul - TV Actress

Siddharth Shukla - TV Actor

Aarti Chhabria - Actress

Meghna Malik - TV Actress

Shweta Tiwari - TV Actress

Karanvir Bohra - TV Actor

Shaan - Singer

Lauren Gottlieb - Dancer/Actress

Drashti Dhami - TV Actress

Hindi TV Serial - Master Chef India (part 3) - Chef Ripu Daman the winner

Master Chef India is an interesting competition, different from the usual song and dance competitions that happen on many other reality show contests. There is an international Master Chef contest, and this show seems to be styled similar to that, getting common people coming in from auditions from cities all over the country and then appearing before the celebrity chef judges, passing through a number of contests and with people getting kicked out as the show moves on. The celebrity judges appearing for the contest were 3 chefs - Sanjeev Kapoor, Kunal Kapur, and Vikas Khanna, and each of them had their own style, sometimes appearing stern to the contestants and at other times, appearing helpful, pointing out some problems that were happening with the various dishes being made by the contestants, in time that that some changes could be made.
The contestants who appeared on the show are: Chef Ripudaman Handa, Chef Navneet Rastogi, Chef Doel Sarangi, Nisha Verma, Sachin Naik, Yasmin Sheikh, Aditi Madaan, Devyani, Happy Singh, Khokhu Patra, Jehan Bomi Sarkari, and Ishrat Ali. In addition, during the various episodes, there were more stars from TV who appeared. The channel were trying to promote the show in different other shows. The difference between this time was that the show instead of appearing on the weekend, was moved to a weekday slot (and hence the show operative time was reduced from 48 minutes to 24 minutes).
The contestants had to go through different contests, but one of the most interesting episodes was where the contests were forced to use a bamboo as the cooking medium, which was very difficult for everybody. In other episodes, the show forced the contestants to form teams and work with each other, and this could cause ego problems to everybody in the team, with this sometimes causing problems in terms of differences in how the teams were able to work together.
Another episode was interesting where the contestants were forced to make dishes out of left overs, items that were discarded during the normal kitchen processing, such as jackfruit peel, leaves of cauliflower, tamarind leaves, papaya seeds, and others. Another interesting dish was to make a pizza on a tawa instead of an oven, and to make it using Indian ingredients and using items from a state other than their own.

Hindi TV Serial - Big Boss 6 - More contestants out of the house

Bigg Boss (or Big Boss as most of us would pronounce it) has seen some pretty nasty previous seasons, with a lot of intrigue, incredible number of fights happening (some of which do not make much sense to those watching, which leads to the feeling that some of them were inspired by the channel in order to add more controversy to the programme). This time, Salman Khan, who repeated himself as the host from the previous season, had started giving statements before the show started that the previous shows had gone in for too much of such fighting, which made it difficult for families to watch the show and the idea going forward was to ensure that the behavior inside the house would be family friendly. Of course, for a number of people, it seems difficult to believe that a show where people make more money and become famous if they remain controversial (or atleast most of them), so there was some interest in watching the show. And even in the previous year, there was some controversy with many of the show's participants claiming that Salman Khan had actually been very harsh with many of the participants of the show.
In the first week itself, there were some harsh words between the common man inside the show, Kashif, who seemed to be ready for fights with many of the other house mates and was scolded a number of times by Salman Khan for his behavior. And Kashif was one of the first to be removed from the show. First of course, Dinesh Lal Yadav was evicted from the show after popular vote went against him. The next few exits from the program were Sayantani Ghosh and Aseem Trivedi (who was the cartoonist threatened with sedition by the Maharashtra police for his cartoons) and Karishma Kotak (who was informed that her father had died and who hence left the show voluntarily).

Hindi TV Serial - Diya Aur Bati Hum - Suraj back after successfully participating in World Top Cook

The show decided to send the family abroad, and which would also give the viewers a look at an international city; and so initially when Sandhya proposed that Suraj take part in a cooking contest, there was hesitation. Suraj himself was not convinced, but over a period of time, everybody agreed. And then Suraj won the local round of the show, getting selected to go to the international finale of the show, being held in Singapore. As part of the rules of the show, he was able to take along his wife, and his parents; and all of them got a chance to go to Singapore and stay in the most posh hotel over there, the Marina Bay Sands.
There were many challenges even just being there, since neither Suraj nor his parents knew English or other customs prevalent in Singapore, and that is another reason where an educated daughter-in-law in the form of Sandhya was able to provide incredible help. She took on the role of explaining to Suraj everything that was happening, and did not lose sight of their local customs as well (such as when she and Bhabho observed a fast, or observed Teej over there when a party was also ongoing).
The international cooking contest was a bit of drama, since it seemed a bit fake even though it was just part of a serial, and over a number of events, the cooking abilities of Suraj were able to fascinate everybody, even though some other participants were trying to put him down, or in the finale, one of them even tried to accuse him of spoiling her dish. So, now the contest is over, and Suraj is back, and they are showing him getting welcomed with celebrations, and so on. What was strange were the brief attempts being made to showcase this in real life as an achievement, since this was a fictional episode in a serial.

Hindi TV Serial - Jhalak Dikhla Jaa - Getting stars to participate in a dancing competition

Jhalak Dikhla Jaa is now a famous dancing competition, showcasing the dancing prowess of many non-dancing stars. Imagine a cricket star or a cook dancing, you know it is awkward and it will not be as good as  somebody who does a lot of dancing. But if such a person has to dance, then the preparation for the dance needs to happen with an expert choreographer, and with adequate time being given for this preparation.
And so it happens, with some expert doing the judgment (well, 2 out of 3 judges in this year's competition are judges) and you end up with some very good dance performances. So, who all is taking part in this year's contest, who are the comperes, and who are the judges ?

Compere: Manish Paul and Ragini Khanna


Judges: 

Madhuri Dixit
Karan Johar
Remo D'Souza

Participants:


Talat Aziz (Ghazal Singer) with Choreographer Ankita Maityher: eliminated in 1st round
Sanath Jayasuriya (Sri Lankan cricketer) with Choreographer Suchitra: eliminated in 2nd round
Archana Vijaya (Tv Anchor) paired with Choreographer Sanam Johar: eliminated in 3rd round
Pratyusha Banerjee (Actress / Anandi) with Choreographer Deepak: eliminated in 4th round due to illness
Jayati Bhatia (Another Actress) with Choreographer Diwakar nayal: eliminated in 5th round
Bharti Singh (Comedian) with Choreographer Savio
Darsheel Safary (Famous Child Actor) with Partner Avneet and Choreographer Jai Kumar Nair
Gia Manek (Sathiya fame Gopi Bahu/Actress who quit the serial in a dispute over this show) with Choreographer Nishanth Bhat
Gurmeet Choudhary (Famous Actor) with Choreographer Shampa Sothalia
Isha Sharvani (Former Actress) with Choreographer Salman (won Dance India Dance Season 1.)
Ravi Kishan (Bhojpuri Actor) with Choreographer kunjan jani
Shibani Dandekar (actress/Host/Singer) with Choreographer Punit Pathak (3rd place in Dance India Dance Season 2)
Sushil Kumar (who won crores on KBC) with Choreographer Alisha Singh (another runner up of Dance India Dance Season 1)

And now there are 3 wild card entries: Karan Wahi, Rithvik Dhanjani and Rashmi Desai Sandhu

Hindi TV Serial - Big Boss 5 - Juhi Parmar wins the finale of the Big Boss Season 5

This year's big boss was indeed a spectacle; a lot of people I knew stopped watching it because of the high amount of fights that happened on the show all the time. If the objective of the makers of the serial was to show the possible amount of fights and controversy that could happen, then having the specific characters in the show who would do a lot of fighting was important; in the past, Dolly Bindra had filled that role; in the current series, people such as Akashdeep Sehgal, Pooja Missra, Siddharth, Mehak, and a few others had played that role importantly. The glamour cum controversy quotient was filled to the maximum with the induction of Sunny Leone as a participant; Sunny was controversial since she had acted in adult / porn movies for many years now and hence to have such a participant was interesting and controversial.
The overall participant list for the serial was:
Shakti Kapoor, Pooja Bedi, Shonali Nagrani, Nihita Biswas, Shraddha Sharma, Mandeep Bevli, Raageshwari, Vida Samadzai, Mahek Chahal, Sonika Kaliraman Malik, Pooja Misrra, Gulabo Sapera, Laxmi Narayan, Juhi Parmar, Amar Upadhyay, Siddharth Bhardwaj, Akashdeep Saighal
alias "Sky", Swami Agnivesh, Sunny Leone, Andrew Symonds, and Yamamotoyama
Towards the end, Sunny Leone was the last contestant to be evicted from the show; and then the final episode of the show was where the decision would be taken on who won the show. So, we had 4 people in the show at the finale - Siddharth, Mehek, Sky, and Juhi. Sid and Sky were evicted, leaving Juhi and Mehek in the show; and then the hosts, Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan finally announced that Juhi was the winner.

Hindi TV Serial - Bigg Boss Season 5 - More drama and more fights

Looks like the concept of Bigg Boss is to get as many people to watch the serial as much as possible, and with each season, the amount of tension and fights in each version has increased to a much higher degree every time. The first couple of versions did not have too much fighting, but as the years have gone by, the amount of fighting has increased drastically. Each time, there have been members in the serial who fight for no given reason, thus giving rise to the suspicion that these people have been told to fight as much as possible. As long as they do not actually physically fight, they are also retained and not evicted.
This time, with the season 5, there are some more changes. The serial started with some big name hosts, with the popular movie stars, Sanjay Dutt, and Salman Khan. In addition, the show started with many more women in the show, a total of 12 women, 1 transgender, and 1 has been movie actor (Shakti Kapoor). Over a period of time, 2 more men have come into the show. The contestants are:
Shakti Kapoor - Initially, the only male in the show.
Pooja Bedi - One of the initial brave faces of Indian cinema, who exposed as much as required, and did a couple of good roles.
Shonali Nagrani - A former contestant of Miss India and a TV anchor.
Nihita Biswas - Very famous for being the wife of Charles Sobhraj. Evicted on day 7.
Shraddha Sharma - Not a very well known television actress
Mandeep Bevli - A news anchor
Raageshwari - A former MTV VJ and did sundry other things
Vida Samadzai - Famous for participating as a Miss Afghanistan in the international pageant in 2003 and posing in a bikini
Mahek Chahal - An actress
Sonika Kaliraman Malik - A famous wrestler, and 6 months pregnant at entry into the show. She withdrew on Day 8
Pooja Misrra - The biggest fighter among the contestants, who is a former VJ and reality contest participant
Gulabo Sapera - A cultural person from Rajasthan, she was evicted on day 14
Laxmi Narayan - A transgender
Juhi Parmar - famous for being the main lead in a long running serial
Amar Upadhyay - Played the role of Mihir in the famous Star serial, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. Entered on day 8
Siddharth Bhardwaj - Winner of MTV Splitsvilla. He entered on day 15.

Hindi TV Serial - Khatron Ke Khiladi Part 4 - Fear Factor - Torchaar

Khatron Ke Khiladi is a popular reality show that runs pretty fast, with the most popular format being where a popular male star takes a number of ladies (from television, and other such popular) as contestants and pairs them up with male partners. They are taken through a series of tasks that challenge their fitness, courage, will power, sheer talent, and they go through rounds of elimination till there is an eventual winner.
Last time, the host of the program was Priyanka Chopra, but I think the audiences get more pleasure out of seeing female contestants, and with the host being Akshay Kumar, the show this time (version 4) should get more popular. However, keep in mind that reality contests see more and more confrontation, which makes the show more popular. In the current case as well, Akshay has got more confrontational since the previous time he hosted the programs, and runs down the contestants much more than he used to do in the past.
The contestants these time are:
Aashka Goradia - A television artist
Aarti Chhabria - Acted in a movie along with Akshay Kumar. Has been eliminated.
VJ Bani - MTV Roadies contestant
Anjum Chopra - Member of the Indian national Women's hockey team
Aliesia Raut - Actress, acted in movie Fashion
Diandra Soares - Acted in movies Boom and Fashion
Mauli Dave - Made a name for herself on a singing reality show
Dina Singh - Wife of Vindu Dara Singh
Sambhavana Seth - No one needs an introduction to Sambhavana, who likes a lot of controversy. She has been eliminated.
Poonam Pandey - Created a sensation when claimed she will strip for the Indian team after the One Day World Cup victory. Eliminated.
VJ Mia - A well known VJ
Smita Bansal - The Bahu of the house, on the show Balika Vadhu. Has been eliminated.



More videos of the show on Youtube (link)

Hindi TV Serials - Zor Ka Jhatka - A wacky contest show anchored by Shahrukh Khan

With so many Bollywood stars doing shows for TV nowadays, it had seemed a lot of time since Shahrukh Khan was doing a show for TV, and he finally made it back to TV, doing another reality show called 'Zor Ka Jhatka' on NDTV Imagine. Like many other TV shows, it is based on an American reality show called Wipeout. The show is based on water, falls, and crossing a series of obstacles, and most of the contestants fall in the water rather than make it through. The show is co-hosted by Saumya Tandon, who was there at the location for the contest at Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina. Shahrukh Khan is at the studio, not present at the actual site; the show leverages Shahrukh Khan to the extent that he speaks non-stop at whatever is happening in the show. He is apparently paid a huge amount of Rs. 2.5 crore per show, so they better be making more than that for every show.
For each episode, there is a winner who gets an entry into the grand finale. There are a large number of contestants, mostly TV artistes, but others as well. The list of contestants are:
Akashdeep Saighal
Amit Sareen
Ashima Bhalla
Bhaktiyaar Irani
Claudia Ciesla
Debina Bonnerjee
Karishma Tanna
Krushna Patil
Raja Chaudhary
Rohit Verma
Simran Kaur Mundi
Dimpy Mahajan
Gaurav Chopra
Gracious D’Costa
Hanif Hilal
Jennifer Winget
Sonika Kaliraman
Kushal Punjabi
Manas Katyal
Manoj Kumar
Mink Brar
Narayani Shastri
Natasha Suri
Payal Rohatgi
Priyadarshini Singh
Annie Gill
Vindu Dara Singh
Vrajesh Hirjee

Video of Zor Ka Jhatka - Total Wipeout: February 04, 2011



Zor Ka Jhatka - Total Wipeout - 1st Feb 2011 (Part 2)

Hindi TV Serial - Big Boss 4 - Shweta Tiwari wins the 4th season of Big Boss

Big Boss is now a pretty popular reality show in Indian TV (being the slightly less controversial of the international Big Brother series (which is less censored and where there can be much more explicit scenes between the contestants)). The shows survives on the concept that the audience can get into the lives of minor celebrities, as they live their life in a glass cage in a video monitored house. In addition, the creators of the show do their best to ensure that there is a huge amount of controversy and drama in the show; so you have a contestant such as Dolly fighting with her fellow team members in a way that appeals to those people who like controversies. Then there was the marriage between Sara and Ali Merchant which got heavily criticized once there was proof that they were already married (and they split soon after Sara got out of Big Boss, apparently because Ali was spending all their money).
There have been 3 previous versions of Big Boss before (with the previous winners being Rahul Roy, Ashutosh Kaushik, and Vindu Dara Singh), and all these winners were male, so there was some controversy about the winners of reality shows very rarely being the female contestant. So, for the Big Boss season 4, there was the same expectation that it would be a male winner. The final 4 participants were - Khali, Shweta Tiwari, Dolly Bindra, and Ashmit Patel. This got narrowed down to the final 2, who were Khali and Shweta Tiwari.
When Salman Khan got down to announcing the final winner, there was some amount of doubt about who would be the final winner, and then Shweta Tiwari was announced as the winner.

Hindi TV Serial - Big Boss 4 - Lots of controversy in the house, Dolly Bindra and Sameer Soni thrown out

Bigg Boss4 is getting all the controversy that it needs to increase its TRP and viewer attention, but is also getting some unwanted attention that it would not have wanted. Over the past many weeks, there has been a lot of drama in the media about the serial, with parents and many other organizations complaining about the language used, and also about the level of vulgarity in the serial (especially the fights that happen in the serial, and the drama that is supposed to be staged in the serial). Even in this season, there has been a marriage staged in the serial which is supposed to be a total drama (since they were already married 2 years back). Further, the serial also attempted to show the married couple under a single sheet, apparently on a honeymoon (it is another matter that Ali Merchant had to leave the show soon after, given that he was only a guest on the serial).
And then the major attraction, with the Hollywood sex symbol (many years past her prime though), Pamela Anderson has entered the serial, dressed in a revealing white dress (you can be pretty sure that this is meant to ensure that there is more viewer attention and they would ask her to do more than just dress up). She is just there for 3 days in the serial, and is being paid an amount of Rs. 2.5 crore for this presence (although she has to try and speak Hindi).
On the other hand, the conflict between people in the serial continues, with a face off between Dolly Bindra and Sameer Soni (which resulted in both of them being evicted from the serial - thus saving more members for the week since 2 members have been evicted).
And finally, the Government knocked the appeal out of the serial since it judged the serial as too adult, and thus should not appear before 11 PM.

Hindi TV Serial - Big Boss 4 - Ali Merchant and Sara marriage on the sets - was it a drama ?

Bigg Boss is a popular reality serial, and it is now on the 4th version in the Indian Hindi Serial industry. The appeal of the serial is in the voyeuristic tendencies of people, a chance to see the lives of people, and more so when there is a lot of controversy and protests going on; and Bigg Boss has been obliging, with a lot of protests and fights happening in the serial on an ongoing basis (and when Rahul Bhatt left the serial after being voted out, he claimed that all the fights were scripted by the serial in order to ensure that it remained popular and there was enough controversy for viewers to enjoy).
In this case, Bigg Boss was also controversial because of the protest by Shiv Sainiks due to the presence of Pakistani actors in the serial; however, after some negotiation, the protests came to an end. The various participants in the season 4 of the serial are:
Aanchal Kumar - A model from Chandigarh.
Abbas Kazmi - The lawyer for 26/11 criminal and terrorist, Kasab. Kazmi was evicted early.
Ashmit Patel - Brother of Amisha Patel and an actor himself. Was supposed to be getting involved with Sara on the serial sets.
Begum (Ali) Saleem - Cross-dressing TV host from Pakistan. Evicted.
Devender (Bunty Ustaad) - A famous thief from Delhi, famous for being the inspiration behind the movie, Oye Lucky ! Lucky Oye ! Evicted on the 2nd day for bad behavior.
Dolly Bindra - A television actress and big fighter.
Hrishant Goswami - Former winner of the Gladrags manhunt contest.
Khali - a well know wrestler, part of the WWE
Manoj Tiwari - Bhojpuri movie actor and singer
Rahul Bhatt - Son of Mahesh Bhatt, famous for involvement with terrorist Headley. Evicted.
Sakshi Pradhan - A former winner of Splitsvilla, also famous for a MMS scandal clip
Samir Soni - Worked on various television serials and movies
Sara Khan - Famous as Sadhana in the serial, Bidaai, on TV
Seema Parihar - Former bandit
Shweta Tiwari - Famous TV artist and former wife of Raja Choudhary
Veena Malik - Pakistani model and actress, and former girl-friend of a scam tainted Pakistani cricketer.

And Ali Merchant has recently joined, since he saw his girlfriend Sara behaving strangely on the sets of the serial, apparently flirting with Ashmit Patel. Colors has been tom-tomming that there will be a marriage on the sets of the serial today (11th November), and accordingly, a priest and parents will be allowed on the sets. And there is a huge amount of controversy that they are already married 2 years back, and the second marriage is part of a plan to get more publicity for the show, and to get them a good amount of money from the channel.

Hindi TV Serial - Khatron Ke Khiladi Level 3 - Shabbir Ahluwalia (with his partner Sushma Gupta) is the winner

Khatron Ke Khiladi is a popular short series in which famous participants (from TV, Cinema, and other professions) participate in a series of quests along with their partners. The season has gone through 2 previous seasons in which Mukul Dev and then Akshaya Kumar were the hosts for the season, and a number of ladies participated, with one of them becoming the winner. In this third season, there was a switch whereby the host was a lady, the film star Priyanka Chopra, and the participants were all males from TV and cinema, accompanied by lady participants.
The participants were:
Angad Bedi
Rahul Dev
Armaan Ebrahim
Cyrus Broacha
Karan Singh Grover
Terrence Lewis
Rahul Bose
Abhishek Kapoor
Manjot Singh
Milind Soman
Dino Morea
Ritwik Bhattacharya (Runner up)
Shabbir Ahluwalia (Winner)
The various tasks dealt with tasks where they had to deal with disgusting animals, holding their breath under water, doing balancing over water, and so on.

Hindi TV Reality Serials - Truth Love Cash - earn money as a couple, but tasks are tough and there are temptations

I was switching channels one day, and came across this very interesting reality contests. In most of the boring reality contests, there is things such as dance contests, singing contests, swayamwar and family contests, and so on. And then there are the more controversial (read as more appealing to a younger generation) reality shows on youth oriented channels such as Channel V. Here comes another one: Called Truth Love Cash.
In the show, 7 couples were taken, and they are given a series of tasks, on the successful completion of which money is added to their accounts. At the same time, their commitments to each other is tested by the way of temptations, that would cause either of them to betray each other, thus testing the concept of cash vs. love.
The initial 7 couples were:
Vinit and Arsila
Navneet and Ajay
Chandrani and Hafeez
Sumit and Karishma
Vishakha and Satya
Praveen and Jogita
Hamida and Jamil (eliminated on the first task)
Yudi is the host of the show.
The recent episode of the show that I watched was interesting, and very painful to the participants. The girls were expected to go towards some bikini clad ladies who had coins on their bodies mixed with peanut butter, and then get these plastic coins using their mouths. All of them had a timer that was decided by their male partners. Every 10 seconds, their male partners would get whacked on their buttocks by a evil looking rod wielded by a tough guy, and as long as they could bear it, their partners had time. It was traumatic watching these guys getting whacked, unable to bear it, but wanting their partners to be able to spend more time.

Video of a show on youtube:



More videos on Youtube (link)

Hindi TV Serial - Desi Girl - A new reality show on Imagine TV, getting city girls to live in villages

The majority of India lives in its villages, and the life in villages is very different from that of its towns and cities. There are more activities related to agriculture, farming, animal care, getting water, etc than are present in cities (in fact, some of these activities are not even there in the cities). It is often said that true life in India is like that in the villages, and so you why not come up with a concept where you take city girls, unused to life in the villages, and make them do stuff in the villages and spin a reality show around it. So, you will have activities related to milking cows, dealing with the yuckiness of cow dung (including making cakes from this cow dung), cooking food in the traditional style (without the comfort of modern cooking styles).
So you take 8 glamorous girls from the modern city life (the girls being Sambhavna Seth, Kashmera Shah, Roshni Chopra, Monica Bedi, Anmol Singh, Rucha Gujarati, Ishitta Arun and Aushima Sawhney), and transplant them with rural families. The test - they have to show through numerous tasks that they are suitable for living in the 'real' India.
And then they go through numerous tasks, with a process of elimination removing them from the reality show one by one. Some of the other tasks that they would need to do are: bathing the cows and buffaloes, eating the oily food, washing clothes. In between, you can see that they are not used to doing tasks such as these and complain, but this is the format of the show and they have to do this. And like any other reality show, they all want to win and reach the end.

A sample video from the serial 'Desi girls' on Imagine TV:



Link to more videos on Youtube (link)

Hindi TV Serial - Zara Nachke Dikha - Another reality show on dance, on Star Plus

There are a number of dance shows that are currently ongoing, all in the form of reality shows. This is a show on Star Plus, with a large number of contestants drawn from television. The show was launched last year, and this is the second season of the show. The show started on the 1st of May, 2010, and appears on weekends, at 9 PM on Saturday and Sunday. The teams are split into teams of men and women, also called 'The Battle of the Sexes' (with the names of the boys team being Mast Kalandar boys, and the girls getting called as the Massakali girls). As would be quite obvious, the boys and girls compete with each other in terms of dancing, and these could be individual dances or group dances. These performances are then evaluated by the judges over the 5 separate rounds that happen over the weekend, and then the team with the highest scores gets to select a member of the opposite team for elimination - and if they impress the judges, they can save themselves from elimination.

The judges for the show are:
Shilpa Shetty Kundra
Arshad Warsi
Vaibhavi Merchant

The contestants are:
Masakallis (Girls Team)
Aditi Gupta [who was Eliminated in the show held on June 5, 2010)
Mukti Mohan
Rakhi Sawant (with all her drama being in full form)
Hazel Crowney
Rashmi Desai
Kritika Kamra
Sangeeta Ghosh ( Captain)
Sanjeeda Sheikh
Sparsh Khanchandani (Kid)

Mastkalandars (Boys Team)
Aamir Ali (Captain)
Abhishek Avasthi
Raj/Akkshat Saluja
Kapil Nirmal
Karan Kundra
Angad Hasija
Siddhesh Pai
Sushant Singh Rajput
Ayush Mahesh Khedekar (the Kid)

Long running music talent program - new season of Indian Idol on Sony TV

Indian Idol is a long running serial on Sony TV, now running on the 5th edition (the show itself being modeled on a popular American serial of the same type and format). The concept of the show is fairly simple; people from all over the country can apply to showcase their talent (and by now, the auditions of Indian Idol are huge, with a large number of people from all over the country wanting to apply), and then take part in several rounds, being judged by eminent musicians and singers (a jury of 3, out of which Anu Malik seems to be the ever-present member).
Over a period of time, the winner of the contest gets a lot of fame, the opportunity to get a break into the singing industry, and also huge awards from the sponsors (in this case, a 1 year contract with Sony BMG, and also 1 crore as prize money). The winner of the First Indian Idol was Abhijeet Sawant, who is also one of the presenters for the show, the other being Prajakta Shukre (who placed 4th in the first season of Indian Idol). The judges for this season have been changed, with Anu Malik remaining (he remains the judge with the sharpest tongue, claiming that he is a straight talking person), with the others being the singer, Sunidhi Chauhan, as well as the musician and singer Salim Merchant. Both of them are a bit softer on the contestants, but otherwise have their own opinions, and it is also pretty clear that they will take their own decisions (not swayed by Anu Maik). In addition, it is also rumored that the channel would prefer that there be always some amount of conflict so that the show also remains interesting.

Video of Indian idol 5 Auditions 26th April 2010



Indian idol 5 Auditions 26th April 2010 Episode 1

Hindi TV Serial - Dance India Dance - Won by Shakti Mohan from Terrence Ki Toli on 23 April 2010

Dance India Dance is a dance contest that appears on Zee TV, now for 2 seasons. It is one of the few shows (like Indian Idol on Sony) that gives a chance to normal people to show off their skills, in this case, their Dance skills (and in fact, there is no other show that allows ordinary people to show off their dancing skills). It has become fairly popular, attracting a huge amount of attention and ensuring that contestants spend a lot of time preparing for the show, showing dancing skills that are incredible. Now, when you look at some of the finalists, they seem as good as people you see in the movies, and prepare some incredible acts.
Dance India Dance has had a number of celebrity guests such as: Salman Khan, Dia Mirza, Amitabh Bachchan, Vivek Oberoi, Govinda Ahuja, Helen, Arshad Warsi, Jeetendra, Boman Irani, Ritesh Deshmukh, with the judges being Terence Lewis, Remo D'Souza and Geeta Kapur. In addition, Mithun Chakraborty is the Grandmaster of the show, and even has veto powers to use once in the show to change a decision.
After a lot of steps, the last 4 finalists were:
Shakti Mohan, 24 (Mumbai)
Dharmesh Yelande, 27 (Vadodara)
Punit Pathak, 23 (Mumbai)
Binny Sharma, 22 (Ahmedabad)
The final was a long affair (and maybe the show organizers should ensure that the finals should never be so long that they lose the attention of viewers. We started watching the program, but lost interest midway and switched on again only at the end).

Video of Lux Dance India Dance Season 2 April 23 '10 Janta Ka Faisla

Hindi Reality show - Dance India Dance on Zee TV - Cabaret Queen Helen Graces Dance India Dance.

Dance India Dance Season 2 has been graced by some of the biggest names and best dancers in the industry. ‘Jumping Jack’ Jeetendra to our favorite Govinda have both added zing to the stage, but coming on soon will be one who sent pulses rising and hearts beating faster. Helen in her heydays was proclaimed the ‘Cabaret Queen’ of Bollywood and her grace is still intact decades later.
Helen, the ‘cabaret queen’ of Bollywood will grace the last celebrity episode of Lux Dance India Dance. This is the episode wherein all the final 5 contestants will be given a challenge by Geeta Ma to dance to her Bollywood style.
This episode will also declare the 4 finalists for the mega finale that will take place live on 23rd April at Andheri Sports Complex, Mumbai.
It will be interesting to watch who will finally win the coveted title of ‘dance ka sabse bada superstar’ but until then, we’ll just sit back and watch awe stuck when Helen throws her moves as Grandmaster Mithun Da along with Remo and Terence try to woo her..!!

Catch the episode on 16th April, 9:30pm exclusively on Zee TV.


Helen with saumya on Zee TV Dance India Dance


Helen with Mithun da on Zee TV Dance India Dance