Of bad acts and better TV

The return of the popular judging trio Sonu Nigam, Anu Malik and Farah Khan on the ongoing season of Indian Idol marks the coming around of reality shows in Indian telly. One of the first shows to make the format of talent hunts big in the country, it has come a long way in entertaining the audience with good, bad and ugly performances. Interestingly, the show — like many other reality shows — garners attention for all the above-mentioned kind of performances, as long as it is peppered with a good dose of drama. Which explains why more often than not, the auditions of these shows are far more entertaining than the shows themselves.

Anu Malik insists that as much as the audience loves the dramatics, none of it is staged. “Nothing that you see on Indian Idol is staged or planned and nothing you will ever see will be, because jahan Anu Malik hoga wahan teleprompter nahi hoga (where  there’s Anu Malik, there will never be there teleprompter). The walkouts and fights are very real on the show. A very famous singer said to me, ‘I like you because you are imperfect.’ If Sonu and Farah and I break into an argument, that’s for real; when we kiss and make up, that is also for real.”

Often adding to the drama are the poor performers at the auditions, or the scapegoats, if you will.

Ehsaan Noorani, who judged a season of The Stage, points out that this happens only during the pre-elimination process. “There are agencies that are involved in the selection process. These agencies belong to the production house of the show. The judges get involved at a later stage,” he explains adding that it isn’t possible for the judges to physically screen every contestant from the sea of applications they get.

When 24-year-old Nihal Shetty gave an average performance on season one of The Stage, he received criticism from the four celebrity judges on board — Ehsaan Noorani, Vishal Dadlani, Monica Dogra and Devraj Sanyal. While some of this criticism did hurt, he took most of it in his stride. “The judges never insulted any contestant’s performance. On some occasions, one or two comments did hurt, some even felt mean, but never insulting,” Nihal recalls.

When Indian adaptations of international audition-based reality shows arrived, one of the key aspects of their structure was the drama. Judges yelling at a contestant, chiding them for their below-average performance, walking out in the middle of a performance, getting into an argument among themselves — the tension created on the show due to these activities is what sold the reality show on television.

However, with changing times, and even quickly changing audiences, these techniques of creating drama are slowly beginning to take a back seat, insists Sankalp Pradhan, who has been on the production team for reality talent shows such as India’s Dancing Superstar and Sa Re Ga Ma Pa. He believes that this transition is because people started seeing through the drama that aired on television. “For quite a while, instances like these gave the show, and the channel, a lot of traction. But soon, the drama on reality talent shows started getting obvious and people had had enough of it,” he explains.

While that may be the case, effort is made to organically induce some theatre. “I won’t say that the shows are scripted, but the production team does give a brief about the participant out to the judges, since the producers know a lot more about the contestant and are more connected with them. Judges take time to get acquainted with participants. This translates better on-screen too; they make for better human stories,” he continues. Hence you see in-depth documentaries on the lives of some contestants while others are restricted to short frames.

While he agrees that contestants’ stories make for great television, Ehsaan believes that there is a certain responsibility on the part of the jury too. “One shouldn’t be a judge on a show just for the TRP business; there is a responsibility there. The contestants are very nervous in front of us and so they falter — it doesn’t do to be mean and rude. For me judging is secondary, talent is first,” he says.

Shaan, a fellow judge, who presides over the panel on The Voice, concurs. “Whatever feedback we give deeply affects the contestants, since they look up to us judges so much. That is why I am always careful to neither insult them, nor to praise them to the skies. Sometimes, contestants feel so disheartened when they don’t make it that they quit music all together. It is only those with grit who can ultimately make it as a playback singer.”

With inputs from Sameena Razzaq