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Anand
Mahendroo
The
maverick returns
With
over 600 ad films, documentaries, short films, educational, motivational
and corporate films and an experience of over two decades in the audio-visual
media to his credit, Anand Mahendroo is a true veteran and also a force
to reckon with in the television industry.
| I went wrong in my thinking that DD has considerable viewership in metros and major towns. The fact is that DD’s viewership in urban centres has been weaned away by satellite channels and I realised this fact after going on air. |
In fact, he is one of the pioneers of television serials in India. Ever
since he made India’s first sitcom Idhar Udhar 16 years ago, he has
proved that he has the ability and capability to come up with winners.
All the subsequent serials he produced and directed, be it Isi Bahane,
Indradhanush or Dekh Bhai Dekh, were big hits, both in terms of business
and popularity.
Encouraging the formidable success of Dekh Bhai Dekh which re-ran thrice
on Sony, two years ago Anand revived his super comedy Idhar Udhar and
made its sequel for Doordarshan with the same title and same lead characters.
So bullish was he about the sequel that he paid a high MG to Doordarshan.
He was confident that the sequel would deliver the goods despite the plethora
of sitcoms on various channels. But the sequel in its makeover format
didn’t score with DD viewers and Anand was compelled to pull it off
air after 26 episodes. Ask him what went wrong and his quick response
is that DD was a wrong platform for a sitcom.
"Doordarshan’s image is synonymous with mythologicals,"
he reasons. "Which is why it is an unviable channel for soap and
sitcoms. I also went wrong in my thinking that DD has considerable viewership
in metros and major towns. The fact is that DD’s viewership in urban
centres has been weaned away by satellite channels and I realised this
fact after going on air. Also I got an expensive deal from DD, the MG
was very high. In short, from business point of view I went wrong and
Idhar Udhar turned out to be a losing proposition."
But two years after the debacle of Idhar Udhar’s sequel, Mahendroo
is back in television business again. Having learnt a lesson, he has now
opted for a satellite channel. His latest venture of course, a sitcom
called Daddy Samjha Karo, is being telecast on the one-month-old SAB TV
every Wednesday at 8.30 pm. Starring Girish Oak, Shubhangi Gokhale, Anju
Mahendroo, Kenny Desai, Prachi Save, Ektaa Sharma and Karishma Mehta,
the sitcom revolves around a widower father, his three lovely teenage
daughters and his sister.
Prem Pujari, the father, dotes on his daughters, even spoils them except
for one thing-they are not allowed boyfriends. Having gone through a terrible
tragedy in the arena of love, he is of the firm belief that love spells
trouble pain and misery. The girls have another character in the family
who helps in multiplying the restrictions on their freedom.
This is their bua who has left her own family in Bilaspur to help her
widower brother in bringing up these young girls. While the girls are
busy conjuring up ways and means of evading the restrictions imposed on
them, Bua is forced to rush back home on hearing that many advantages
are being taken of in her absence. Finally the girls get together and
decide that if they succeed in introducing some romance in their father’s
life, he may get off their backs. And that’s when they put in a classified
ad in the papers and that’s when all the fun really begins.
"It is basically a sitcom about relationships and clash of values,"
explains Mahendroo, adding further that, "the characters are extremely
lovable and most of all normal. They have their idiosyncrasies like we
all do and are driven by love, jealousy, caring and ambitions like we
all."
Mahendroo’s next venture ready for telecast on Zee Alpha (Marathi)
is a soap called Agnipariksha which revolves around a rich family which
disintegrates after the death of its patriarch only to be reunited by
an orphan girl in the end.
While he has worked on the concepts and scripts of both the shows and
also does the creative supervision besides being a producer, he is not
calling the shots from behind the camera because he says he is busy working
on an animation project and two film scripts, one of which will go on
the sets in September. Needless to say, it is a comedy based on relationships.
A true task master and a perfectionist to the core, he regrets that with
the sudden boom in television software in the post-satellite television
era, lot of cinema failures and rejects started making programmes which
has lead to a sharp deterioration in quality. "People wanted to buy
flats and cars and television became the best option for them to acquire
them," he points out. "But the good thing that has also happened
is that lot of young talented professionals got an opportunity to showcase
their talent." He feels the television scene is still in a state
of flux. "But the system will come and ethos will evolve," he
also regrets the fact that these days the channels are too market-driven
and therefore what you have is only market-oriented programming.
AL Chougule