THROUGH THE YEARS
Our hitlist: 15 fabulous Doordarshan shows you can binge-watch even today
Ageneration remembers watching Doordarshan (DD) serial Mahabharat with the whole family on Sunday mornings, almost like a ritual. We are past the era when TV was a community experience. With the coming of satellite TV in the 1990s, DD saw viewership dip. As the satellite revolution penetrated small towns, its audience declined further. With the arrival of OTT platforms, DD pretty much dropped from the nation’s consciousness. Its shows no longer create buzz, like they once did. Yes, viewers didn’t have any other channels to watch then, but the serials were made by the best and brightest in the business and many have stood the difficult test of time. Our pick of a few of the best...
Acoming-of-age show based on the lives of trainee commandos, Fauji (1989) found a national audience for its insider’s view of military life.
But that’s not why you know Fauji. A young, dimpled Shah Rukh Khan played Lieutenant Abhimanyu Rai. A Kannan played Major Narayanan, ending training sessions with the signature quote “Koi shak yaa sawal? (Any doubt or query?”) Vikram Chopra was Varun ‘I say chaps’ Chauhan. If you’re watchingfauji today – it’s streaming on Amazon Prime – you’ll find a heartwarming, earnest narrative peppered with instances of male bonding, romantic interludes, team banter and a non-jingoistic war sequence thrown in.
Andyou’ll see whyindia fell in love with Shah Rukh Khan.
Whywatchthe historical drama now? For its opulent sets, historically accurate costumes andbig budget – all rare for the time. For the show’s own history – an on-set fire claimed 52 lives and left the lead actor and director, Sanjay Khan, with 65% burns.
But mostly to remind yourself of what Tipu Sultan – the last Indian ruler to valiantly resist British rule – meant for India.
Khan, now 78, remembers the fire. “On the first dayof shoot after recovery, I wasso weak, I needed acrewtohelp memountthe horse,” he recalls. That is the momentthat gave me back my self-respect as a man.”
If you want to know what India was like in the 1980s, look no further than Hum Log (1984). It also belongs to the era when TV tackled social issues like family planning, empowerment of women, alcoholism and drug abuse.
Author Manohar Shyam Joshi created a compelling portrait of a lower middleclass joint family – the alcoholic Basesar Ram, his self-sacrificing wife Bhagwanti and their five children.
Actress Seema Pahwa, who played the eldest daughter, Badki, feels its plot is still relevant as ground realities in city peripheries, rural areas and small towns, where Indian mainstream cinema is now sourcing its stories from, remain unchanged.
A whodunnit with a bit of I-know-whatYou-did-last-summer. It debuts a young, hot Milind Soman, alongside Rahul Bose, who play two of five friends reuniting 13 years after their MBAS. Whywatchitnow? “Ontheonehandyouhadhumlog.onthe other had was this Westernised, urban look of India,” says Samirsoni, whoplayed the villain. “It’s interesting to see how that played out 24 years ago.” Thatis the reason to watch it.
Hilarious, episodic, and one of those shows (it’s playing nowonamazonprime) that so effectively captured middle-class life that you wondered whether you were laughing at the characters or at yourself.
Ranjit (Shafi Inamdar), his wife Renu (Swaroop Sampat) and Renu’s unemployed brother Raja (Rakesh Bedi) live in a tiny flat in Mumbai. And everything still seems familiar: calculating one’s budget before visiting a restaurant, spinning lies to avoid annoying relatives. And this is what makes it watchable 35 years later. Sampat says she enjoying working on this show more than anything she’s done.
Featuring popular faces, including Archana Puran Singh and Neena Gupta, it revolved around two rich, rival households. The show ran for five years.
In 2019, it might seema little kitschy and melodramatic-- the showactually dimsthe lights to indicate lovemaking – but there are several reasons to watch it nowincluding the plot twists and well-written characters. Above all, who doesn’t like to see that deadly cocktail of revenge-jealousy-ambition play out on screen?
Says Singh, “It was based on reality and this resonated withtheaudience. Theshow wasshotinreal locations. Junoonwouldfit well in the web space today.”
It’s still hard to find good shows that revolve around children. Amol Palekar’s Kachchi Dhoop ( 1986) remains a breath of fresh air. Based onlittle Women, and written bychitra Palekar, it chronicles the joys and sorrows of a single mother and her three daughters. It’s still #relatable. The warm, slice-of-life narrative zooms in on the personalities of the girls, their ambitions and struggles.
“I wanted a Sunday morning slot, but the channel didn’t have one. I went to Delhi and convinced them to create it. Andlater, shows like Mahabharat got that slot,” recalls Amol Palekar. Thisshowfromnearly30years ago offers apeekinto Kashmiri life, and muchhasn’t changed. It follows the life of a family that lives ondallakeandrents out three houseboats named Gul, Gulshan and Gulfam. Then, as now, survival is tough. Parikshit Sahni, who played the family’s patriarch, says the role was an easy one, given he was raised in Srinagar. “It is my home. I knew their language, their traditions, their concerns,” he says. Even then, security concerns meant they had to shoot some episodes in Bombay.
Whywatcha 31-year-old show about a man who was born 222 years ago? Because the man and his poems are still necessary and timely in a world that finds new platforms to pull itself apart with hate.
The DD show, uploaded on Youtube, still has tens of thousands of views. This is whereto watch Naseeruddin Shah as Ghalib, delivering lines by the poet and screenwriter Gulzar. This is where to view Ghalib’s timeless take on religious bigotry. This where to enjoy songs sungbyjagjit Singh and Chitra Singh. Says Neena Gupta, who played Ghalib’s muse, Nawab Jaan, “The younger generation knows verylittle aboutghalibandthe show is a wonderful wayto get to know his work.”
Nukkad ( 1986-87) was Indian television’s first, and, perhaps, only serial of the street. It had Guru (Dilip Dhawan) – he ran an electrical shop, and, was, in effect, the groupleader; the lovable alcoholic, Khopri, (Sameer Khakhar); Maria aka Teacherji (Ramavij); andkaderbhai (Avtar Gill), the owner of the local restaurant. “Anukkad re-run would work because, at its core, it is about a group of people who hang out together, trying to help each other,” says actor Pawan Malhotra, who played cycle mechanic, Hari, in the serial.
Based on Jawaharlal Nehru’s book, The Discovery of India, Bharat Ek Khoj was a 53-episode drama spanning a 5,000-year history till Independence, directed by Shyam Benegal. It cast the who’s who of India’s actors in their youthful prime – Naseeruddin Shah, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Ompuri. In DD’S early years, when fiction content had not yet begun, the idea was “not to zone out the audience but to engage them”, says actress, Mita Vashisht, who played Suhasini, Chandragupta Maurya’s love, in one of the episodes.
The 1988 television film, directed by Govind Nihalani, is based on Bhisham Sahni’s novel onpartition. Its taut storytelling is about the calamity that envelops the life of a young Dalit couple as they are used in a plot to let loose a bloodbath, and the ensuing communal madness. These are events that should have been history by now, but aren’t. Tamaswillalways be relevant for this reason.
“They are like a box of Indian sweets in a highly-coloured container...” says writer Alexander Mccall Smith of Rknarayan’s Malgudi stories. The series is about the world of carefree schoolboys in a village in south India. The plot revolves around Swami and his friends Mani, Shanker, Somu and Rajam, and their escapades in and out of school. The appeal of Malgudi Days is that it transports us to a time when things were less complicated.
“Main samay hoon (I am Time),” announced a deep voice at the beginning of every episode of the mammoth94-episode Mahabharat, produced by veteran filmmaker, BR Chopra, which began in 1988. The greatest epic ever told went on to achieve great popularity on TV.
Made firmly in the calendar art style with glittering tinselly costumes and cardboard sets, the show was lifted to sublime heights bynotedhindiwriter Drrahimasoom Raza’s dialogues. (He even invented words such as Pitashri and Matashri.) He was targeted by Hindu fundamentalists who wanted to know how a Muslim was writing dialogues for a Hindu epic. Raza, who hailed from Ghazipur in UP, said, “Whycan’t I write the dialogues? Aminot a son of the Ganga?” Watchthe showtoday for its unforgettable writing.
Khandaan (1985) cast every big name in TV in its time – Neena Gupta, Jayant Kriplalani, Girish Karnad, Shernaz Patel, Tinuanand. It told the story of arich industrialist family. Gupta, who made her TV debut with the show, played a business tycoon. It waspatel’s debut too. She played anurse married into the family. “Theshow looks dated but is still relevant because of the content,” says Patel. “It was a family saga with highs and lows of relationships, with which we can connect today.” September 15, 1959: President Rajendra Prasad inaugurated the first TV experimental centre in New Delhi.
1964
Educational programmes for schools were started. 1965
DD started a five-minute news bulletin.
1972
The second TV station came up, in Bombay, followed by stations in Jalandhar, Srinagar, Calcutta and Madras.
1975
Satellite Instructional Television Experiment used a satellite to broadcast educational programmes to villages across six states.
1976
DD separated from AIR Got its signature montage (made by the NID)
Got its music by sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. Telecast its first TV serial Ladoosingh Taxiwala.
1982
DD could use satellites and switched over to colour.
1980s
Often called the golden era of Doordarshan with soaps like Hum Log and Buniyaad.
2002
Dd-bharati Channel launched.
2003
DD News channel launched by converting the Dd-metro channel into a 24-hour news channel.
2004
Doordarshan’s DTH service launched. Doordarshan now operates 24 channels, commands a viewership of 596 million.