"Man is a social animal": Does forced and limited society bring out the animal and selfish traits in man? Do the good survive or do they need to play foul too? For answers to such queries, watch Big Boss.
Big Boss, Endemol India’s whole new offering on Sony TV, falls into an untrodded genre for Indian Television. For a change, it is not about music or dance, adventure or quiz shows. Its just about how 13 celebs, locked up in a house for three months, manage to stay and stay well. By hook or by crook, whoever manages to avoid being voted out by the contestants or the audience till the end, gets a whopping 50 lakh.
The ’game’ is very basic but in being basic, lies its ingenuity. When celebs are reduced to mere mortals and have to cook, clean and fend for themselves, their true colours come peeping out. There is no contact with the external world. The only guiding force is the ’Big Boss’ who traces the activities of the inhabitants by means of cameras. The process is simple: contestants nominate two people every week for elimination from the house. The two people with the max votes are eligible to be voted out on Friday, in a special episode hosted by Arshad Warsi. There are plenty of interesting things to do the rest of the week. There is a ’weekly task’ which can be as random as presenting a circus. There are confession rooms where the contestants can vent out frustrations. There are certain romantic tracks in the show at present, more specifically the Aryan-Anupama affair and the Amit-Rakhi angle. Copious amounts of back-biting and kitchen politics are apparent. Kasmira Shah is the uncrowned queen in the politics department. No matter how things seem at the surface, everyone is bent on doing all they can to ensure their victory. This is what forms the interesting aspect.
The celebs roped in as participants are disappointing. An infamous Rakhi Sawant, an ex Mr India Aryan Vaid, some models like Carol and Anupama, actor Amit Sadh and Rahul Roy are there among others. Indeed, giving 3 months of time for a game show cant be possible for everyone. ;-)
There are certain aspects of the show that are irritating. Although manipulation is perhaps necessary to safeguard a spot in the house, sometimes it seems really artificial..almost staged. Cynics might say that celebs wont behave in the way shown when they know they are being watched on camera. But then again, the time duration is quite long. They are people too and get used to it. At times, the clothes the females on the show wear, make it too embarrasing for a family show.
Big Boss is certainly not a revolution. It has its fair share of pros and cons. But it does try to present to us something new. Give it a shot if reality TV is your favourite television genre.