Accent the positive

TV serials are becoming more like Hindi movies daily. Is it any wonder viewers prefer the IPL?

Theres something about the IPL we cannot understand. And thats the commentary. Dont you find yourself straining your ears to make sense of Danny Morrison & Co?
IPL has employed cricket commentators and former international players from around the globe for the tournament including India,Sri Lanka,Australia,New Zealand,South Africa,the West Indies and England. Like the IPL,this is a great advertisement for the globalisation of the game but cricket commentary it is,often,not. Our hearing aids (namely,ears) find it difficult to convert sound waves into comprehensible words when accompanied by Australasian or West Indian accents. By dint of watching Hollywood films and TV shows we manage to get what Americans mean when they speak but only just. These voices from Down Under? Theyre like a verbal jigsaw puzzle: baffling until you get it.

More so since commentators speak in the heat of the action. In their excitement,they increase the speed of their speech delivery to match the games tempo. Words run into one another and the resulting collision is,unfortunately,not music to the ears. Sometimes,its difficult to differentiate between a commentator and the Zoozoos in the Vodafone TV commercials. Honest.
And if we,who claim to speak English,find the hearing tough,what about those who dont know A from B? Non-English speakers love their cricket too. Apparently,Sony Max does offer Hindi commentary that apparently DTH companies pass on to their viewers. Web comments on the quality of this commentary are mostly unprintable. The kindest remark is that it is like Doordarshans used to be.
Ahem.
So what do you do? Why,just watch the matches.

A funny thing happened to the TV serial on the way to the small screen. It began to look like big brother. So if you are a besotted devotee of Sapna Babul Ka Bidai (Star Plus), you would,no doubt have watched the rain scene last week when the male and female characters were drenched in water,their clothes clinging to them like a first skin. As the raindrops kept falling on their heads and faces,partially blinding them,the music increased to keep up with the shower. The mans body parts were becomingly sculpted (all the better to appreciate his physique) as he swung into action and walloped the miscreants who were trying to separate him from her and him from his clothes. A fight followed in which our man was floored by several blows before he hit back. The villains hastily escaped in a vehicle,our hero turned to the girl who appeared to be weeping but you dont know for sure it was raining,remember?

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From rain scene via fight sequence,to song and dance. On Yeh Pyar Na Hoga Kam (Colors),the lead pair was seated on a park bench. It was a sunny day (no rain!),they exchanged smiles,the music went romantic,a cue for the girl to rise and coquettishly give him the come hither look before walking away whereupon he extended an arm and burst into a song. It was so,so Bollywood.
The star-crossed lovers,the wicked mother-in-law,the cycle of death and rebirth,the gargantuan bungalows with central stairwells,all that glitters and is not gold,are just a few other examples of Hindi films influences on TV.

This inheritance of gloss,stock characters and plots from Bollywood suggests that television entertainment has not evolved into a unique cultural form. Its taken the melodrama out of films and made a serial business out of it. Viewers know the terrain,it is well traversed and comforting. Path-breaking shows are few and far between. Those that try to be different such as Mahi Way (Sony) dont seem to carry much favour with viewers. As for sitcoms,thats a laugh: where are they? On Sab TV and with very poor viewership. So the only competition to the serial is reality TV. So are you surprised the IPL is doing so well?