Dearth of worthwhile television comedy programmes in India

I don’t remember when I last saw a real comedy programme on Indian television. What you have are slapstick, stand up vulgar programmes that makes only the people in the studio laugh. I have not seen none of the viewers differentiating Comedy Circle in Sony with that of Crime Patrol in terms of expressions. 

Let’s take the case of Comedy Circus in Sony. Many believe it is a success. This can be gauged from Colours channel which copied both Comedy Circus and Crime Patrol theme from Sony. But the levels of comedy in these shows are so floundered sometimes you wonder why are these shows produced? In Comedy Circus, the stand up comedians copy the two judges, script writers, producers and directors of the show so frequently that you get completely bored of it. And who are these people who get spoofed? They are not known to any viewers, they don’t have any standing in the entertainment industry. To make sure the audience doesn’t disconnect from the show, these unknown people are invited to the stage after the show is over. The way Bharati Singh, Krishna, Sudesh and others perform, it seems, we have dearth of good script, good humour, good satire in our country. What remains is mimicry.

But this also brings to the core issue of quality of our own viewership? Are we destined to view these third rated shows? Do we have a choice? In the west, you switch on a genre and choose comedy and you have a lot to choose from. A majority of Indians, despite having hundreds of channels, have to depend on Comedy Central, Just for Laughs etc even today. Sure, some enterprising producers tried making copy of these successful series but failed miserably.

The matter of fact is television is a one way communication. What the TV produces, we have to see. I have no other choice to express my discontent other than switching off. But then the TRP meters are so tampered that you will end up high on rankings. Is there anyway, we can immediately protest a bad programme so that it is booted out before its scheduled end? I am sure technology will bring some solutions.

The Annoying Facebook Home

When Facebook Home was announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the “next version of Facebook,” I was keen to get it on my Android version. After all it could solve everything social. The day it was put on the Play Store on April 12th, I tried to install on my Note II. But I got a message the product was not available in my country. HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II are the only devices where you can use this. I waited till it got released i
nternationally and got it to my phone.

But this was not what I expected. My facebook friends are both close and distant friends, class mates, colleagues and a few other social animals. In activation, I saw photos of people whom I know only remotely, making appearance on my screen more often that I would have wanted. The shifting from Facebook Home to the Application bar was not smooth and I had to adjust the application bars to suit Facebook Home. The text messages were annoying. I thought I would give it a try for a fortnight.

Nothing went well the way I imagined Zuckerberg would have made this. There was Google Now similar to this which again I didnt like. Both failed in my devices because I am staying in India where nothing is organised. The time to work, home, temperature etc are all horribly wrong because Indians are not used to what Zuckerberg had imagined. Even on a sunday, Google Now alerted me to go to office and said my office is just 6 minutes away from my office. The temperature it showed was far different from what it was outside.   On Facebook Home, photos and status updates of innumerable friends whom I normally dont ever bother to see were popping up with cut and paste messages from great authors. There was no way I could customise both FB and FB Home differently. I thought of getting the feedback of those market where this would have got targetted.

But to my surprise I found the Google Play rankings dropped considerably. out of the 1 billion active FB users, only 1 million downloaded FB Home. This I consider is an utter failure. I am fully aware Home is not available in all handsets but then also consider thousands who may be annoyed like me.

Yesterday, I deleted it from my Note II. Post deletion, I feel I have been liberated. I still have Google Now on both my iPad and Note II as well as Xperia Ion. It may not be too far before I get rid of that too.