The "really idiot" Idiot Box

I have always felt that making a good comedy show is very difficult. You can make scary movies, suspense movies, thrillers; just about anything but making a comic show is real hard. This is also proved by n number of shows on TV and m number of movies and just about 1 divided by m multiplied by n actually manage to get a very faint smile.

Ever since I completed my education, I have been confined in my house. Although I am a proven claustrophobic, I can manage in my home without much difficulties. Respite being provided by a huge terrace and few friends who have managed to not work in a call centre. Almost everyone works in some call centre aka BPO aka KPO aka Value Added Service Provider. It is real hard on someone like me who

- hates television,
- reads the newspaper in one sitting in the morning and
- has an erratic internet connection that can’t work more than 10 minutes on stretch

to sit at home and spend time.

So because of all the above citied reasons, I am forced to watch television. The very first problem is the sheer number of channels on air. My good old BPL television has all of 32 channels and I have hard time selecting 32 out of about 100 channels that are beamed down to my home.

By the way these 100 channels include at least 40 regional channels with all the languages like Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Bangla etc thrown in. So much for unity in diversity. I can only understand one channel in a diverse selection.

After those regional channels, there are about 20 odd movie channels that would air movies like Jungle Ki Sherni, Bhoot ka Badla, Basanti ka Baag, Andheri Raat Main .. so on and so forth. Who the hell thought of those names.

Then we would have some news channels. These channels are actually like any other entertainment channel with models clad in business suits acting as newsreaders. The stories are pepped up to touch the audience. Each news channel would have at least one sting operation running in daily and one news item about how they made world a better place to live by exposing someone with the sting operation. Further they would have a four digit number where you could sms your opinion about a certain issue. No offenses meant to him, I am also a huge fan, but today it was Aamir Khan's birth day and every channel had a marquee running with all the messages from people. I sometimes wonder do people actually send in the messages or the channels cook em up?

Not to forget some 10 odd channels where you would have sages and great souls delivering sermons. Some of these people would use an electric guitar, some would sing hindi film songs, some would have a ten year old kid crying and singing praises. And no one ever told them that they would put the worst bathroom singer to shame with their singing skills. The best part about these "religious" channels is the creative names. Aastha, Sanskar etc.

After all this, we have some sports channel and they would have WWF (not the wildlife fund but wrestling) all day long with commentry in Hindi. The kind of language used in that hindi commentry would put any "awara" to shame. And finally there would be a few channels left that you can spend time on (only if they are not showing those numerous saas-bahu sops and shows starting with letter K).

Ok this started out as a post to highlight a few good comedy series on television. I got emotional and got off-topic but here are a few good comedy shows on TV...
1. Lo Kal Lo Baat on Sab TV
2. Sarabhai vs. Sarabhai on Star One
3. The ever classic Dekh Bhai Dekh
4. Office Office on Sab TV
5. Khichdi on Star Plus

Would add more as and when I find more intersting shows or I can recall ...