Life OK – Television With (A LOTTT) of Difference – a Review – from an Ordinary Audience’s POV

One, there are the trend followers who follow the safe and proven way to success… two, there are trend-breakers and trend-makers, who become path-pavers with their out of the box ideas and dare-to-experiment courage and enthusiasm. 

While most of our Television channels belong to the first category, aping one another’s proven TRP earning methods, a new channel suddenly emerges amidst them, totally going against the usual flow, challenging the usual norm of all GECs and paving for itself its own unique identity and becoming a hallmark in itself.

Yes, that is no other channel than Life OK.

Star One revamped into this new channel, not just had a new name and logo, but also a completely new look, new methodology and a unique philosophy of the channel- “cherishing what you have.” This newest venture of Star Entertainment Media Private Ltd. is not just refreshing but highly experimental. The greatest and deliberate breaking away from usual Star GECs is that Life Ok neither has a tag of Star nor its logo and thus has departed from the Star branding and has created a niche of its own.

Before this, we had hardly seen an entertainment channel coming so powerfully with a philosophical and social message to its audience through every layer of its exciting and powerful storylines and content.  Be it Saubhagyavati Bhava ? highlighting the crude reality of domestic violence, which is still very pertinent in our Indian socio-cultural set up and creating social awareness with the message ‘Say No to Domestic Violence’, or Shapath, which subtly encourages youngsters to ‘be in the system to change the system’, instead of being an objective onlooker criticizing the country’s maladies. ‘Meri Maa’ is a tribute to the eternal mother-child relationship, while ‘Tum Dena Mera Saath’ questions the importance of materialistic pursuits as opposed to the simple pleasures in life. The channel also has a light hearted show, ‘Zindagi Kahe – Smile Please’, reminding us that the core essentials that keep a family together is not wealth but values and love for one another, while in “Main Laxmi Tere Aangan Ki” we see an ambitious girl in an aching dilemma to choose between her head and her heart in pursuit of her ideal mate and an ideal lifestyle. A newer show, ‘Amrit Manthan’ polarizes two sisters with different value systems and goals that will finally break or make their lives and their relationship with each other. Also soon to come from March 18^th is ‘Sach Ka Saamna’ with Rajeev Khandelwal where contestants face fiery questions, exposing blatant and shocking truths from their lives. Also in pipeline are some more exiting and new programs that will soon hit your television screens, each with a different flavor and the same underlying message that if you cherish what you have, you will find that your Life’s OK!

Covering almost every possible genre right now, be it a Thriller/Drama in Saubhagyavati Bhava ? or sweet romance in “Main Laxmi Tere Aangan Ki’ and “Tum Dena Mera Saath’ blending in social and family values or ‘Devon Ka Dev – Mahadev, a fiery, passionate and grand love story in a mythological soap based on Shiv and Sati’s divine love, Life OK has in its kitty something to cater to every kind of audience. 

The channel has got Mrs. Madhuri Dixit-Nene making an appearance almost after every show, as a ‘Sutradhaar’ to deliberate on the social message or the ideology hidden in the show, making the audience more socio-culturally aware and not just leave them with a feel-good factor about the shows. This has never been tried before in any entertainment channel and Life OK should be called a pioneer in setting this trend. 

If we talk about being a trend-breaker-and-trend-setter, we cannot miss mentioning ‘Hum Ne Li Hai –Shapath’ which is worth calling a real trend-setter. While so far it was commonly thought  amidst the Entertainment Television sector that a Suspense Thriller is never the suitable topic for a daily soap structure, Life OK has proven this hypothesis wrong and has gone on to churn out episodes after episodes of tightly packed and neat suspense drama on a daily basis that keeps its audience riveted to their seats and never feel a minute of boredom. Some trend-setter, we cannot deny…!!! 

Not just in content, but in another aspect too this channel too has proven itself to be a trend setter. A GEC channel with an aggressive digital presence and marketing strategy, Life OK is extremely active and interactive on Facebook, Twitter and also has its website at www.lifeok.com Never before had a Hindi-GEC channel pushed so hard and yet so successfully on the digital media for its branding and marketing. 

The biggest welcome relief comes in not having a single show on the usual ‘Saas-Bahu’ Jhik Jhik that so dominates the other popular or not-so-popular cable channels, whether regional or national. It is definitely a welcome break for audience who has by now almost finished their tears and flooded buckets weeping over the helpless daughters-in-law by the vamp mother-in-law. Well, before Life OK, who could have thought a popular and high TRP fetching entertainment channel without the saas-bahu melodrama? Here again Life OK is a pioneer, so to say. 

In every show of Life OK, the audience is not only kept engrossed with thrilling and ever-enthralling storylines but are also constantly brought face to face with hard questions with regard to life and whether we are wasting our today-s mourning what we don’t have or living to the fullest, cherishing what we  have and thus seeing our Life to be OK or more than OK…!

With three shows packed in every one hour and with the shortest breaks in between, the channel’s prime time keeps its audience glued to the TV screen like no other channel and the virtual and interactive audience involvement is unparalleled and unprecedented. 

Out of my own curiosity, I have been personally interacting with the young and the old all across the country and have found to my delight that this new channel has not only become popular among its audience almost immediately after its launch on 18^th December, 2011 but it has also got its audience deeply involved with each character and their reel lives and have created a furor among the former, leading to much enthusiastic debates, discussions and guesses as to what their favorite protagonists’ outcome would/should be. One of the most popular shows amidst the entire range remains Saubhagyavati Bhava ? where Karanvir Bohra displays some finest and impeccable acting skills as the psychopath and sadistic husband using domestic violence against his innocent and docile wife Jhanvi in order to acquire her love and devotion, and it was an immediate hit among the audience., creating much debate as to what the end of Viraaj (Karanvir) should be and what step should be correct for the tortured Jhanvi. One student from Pondicherry, Shalini (name changed) says, “I don’t understand much of Hindi and so I don’t watch much of Hindi serials but I never miss a single episode of ‘Saubhagyavati Bhava ?’

Another viewer tweeted about ‘Devon Ka Dev – Mahadev’, “Your show MAHADEV has brought passionate intense & divine LOVE into my life..with MAHADEV & SATI..best love story ever told..!!”

One of the strategic eye-catchers is the innovative and vibrant promos of the shows. One look at them and one can realize that promos have been conceived and shot with equal care just as the shows themselves. Arati (name changed) from Kolkata says, “I don’t get much time to watch Television but one look at the promos and I really feel greedy to watch the entire shows of Life OK.”

With a bunch of young enthusiasts, the core team of Gaurav Banerjee, Ajit Thakur, Content Head Sanjog Gupta and Programming Head Dimpy Dey, are out there to make a new path-breaking instance of Television entertainment that caters to all age group and various sectors of the society. And we know Life OK is not just here to stay but give many rival Hindi-GEC channels a run for their GRPs. Just as Star India CEO, Uday Shankar, once said in an interview, “…(Life OK) is not a weekly game alone – it is building a brand for the future.” 

And we say, what a brand…! what amazing shows… ! And what unprecedented courage and risk-taking strategies moving on to successfully being a path-breaking pioneer… that’s Life OK for all of us, tele-buffs!!! So do tune in and catch the wonderful shows… every day… and thus making your Life a lot more OK…!!!

Review : Kahaani - by Director Sujoy Ghosh

One of the Best Thrillers I have ever watched…! Brilliant Story… Even more Brilliant Making… Some Super Spontaneous Acting by Vidya Balan, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Saswata Chatterjee… such that you don’t feel that these actors are actually facing the camera but just living out their Real Lives! Not to forget Nitya Ganguly and the child artists…and we have an amazing story by Sujoy Ghosh and Advaita Kala aka ‘Kahaani’…

 A Thriller with such a Humane Touch!!! A Socio-Cultural Celebration on the face of the City of Joy… if you are a Bengali, more so one away from the city, it is a must watch for you to transport you back to this beloved motherland… Sujoy Ghosh has shot the city with so much Vibrancy, Vitality and Uncompromising Portrayal of the present Bengali milieu… the Colors, the Cacophony, the Chaos and the Comedy surrounding this city with multiple identities… doing Justice to all of it lies the Usha Uthup number ‘Aami Sotti Bolchhi’… J And you wouldn’t want to miss Big B singing the Tagore song, “Ekla Chalo Re’ !!!

Finery of Detailing, some Gripping Moments and Impeccable Story-Telling and the result – an Awesome Audio-Visual Experience… 

Amidst the Furor and Festivity, a pregnant woman (Balan) comes to the city to find her missing husband  and encountering a dark secret and some darker forces in power-play… and what emerges after that is not for me to divulge but for you to see and experience… some super refined acting and a terrific plot… I can promise you that you would be glued to your seats till the last moment and even after the screen turns black!

Balan as Vidya Bagchi with her baby-bump looks cute and convincing… Nawazuddin Siddiqui, as Khan, is so daunting that you won’t forget him after this… Parambrata, as Rana, is a delight to watch and Saswata Chatterjee, even in a small role as Bob Biswas, does a brilliant job and leaves a lasting impression on your mind…

Not only the masses but even members from the Film Fraternity like Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan and Anurag Kashyap had lauded this baby of Director Sujoy Ghosh… rendering it as a Must-Watch and Multiple-Watches…!!! 

So guys, go out and get yourselves a ticket to one of the finest mainstream movies of the year… Kahaani …!!!

A Crazy Little Idea... To Begin With... The Virus...The Idea Itself...!!!

What Is Reel? What Is Real? What is Unreal? Is the Reel Always the Unreal? Or is the Real Always in a Way Reflected in the Reel? Is what we see on screen the reflection of the real life? Or what the screen or the Reel projects into our minds, later, grow and shape our Reality? These are the FAQs painfully thrown at the world of Cinema and TV and the people habituating this ambiguous world.

There is no simple answer to this complex question. But let’s attempt to find some believable conclusion and conglomeration between this eternal love-hate relationship of the Reel and the Real.

Well, honestly, and with all humility, I believe, that we, the dream merchants, the cast and crew of the so-called ‘Glamor World’ (Oh! They see our Glamor but fail to notice the Grit, the Grime, the Blood, Sweat and Toil, but that’s another topic altogether!!!) are possessed by this Dichotomy between the Reel and the Real. And our pathetic yet glorious state is best described in the dialogues of the much-applauded movie ‘Inception’, “She (Mal) was possessed by an idea, this one, very simple idea, that changed everything. That our world wasn't real. That she needed to wake up to come back to reality, that, in order to get back home, we had to kill ourselves.”

We, the ones who are passionately in love with the world of Cinema and Television and the weird, real-surreal world of the Audio-visual are almost in a similar state as Mal from the movie. We all are possessed by an ‘Idea’… the ‘Idea of Creation’ that constantly makes us feel that the world we live in is not ‘enough’ Real… just a bit short of ‘Really’ satisfying…and so we need to Create…we are possessed by the virus of an Idea that only ‘Creating’ is Real... very much in accordance with Plato’s concept of the ‘Original’ and the ‘Copy’ and the constant jostle between which one comes before the other, I presume, and hence this ‘Idea of Creation’ bugs us… eats us up day in and day out and drives us up to making every Friday box office rush and every Wednesday TV TRP traffic work out at their best.  Like Mal, our world, the one we live in, in our all physicality is only part real. We are mostly possessed by the Idea – the colors, the sounds, the action, the drama and the catharsis. And this catharsis is what is similar to Mal’s description of ‘killing ourselves’. 

In every movie one watches, in every TV show that one weeps and laughs over, we, the makers, the mothers and the fathers, the ruthless laborers of this world of entertainment, lose our real selves, kill our own ‘Real’ identities and ‘Create’ another ‘Reality’ to be projected on to the Reel.  We, the Writers, as we write, become our very Protagonists, donning their roles, their shades, entering their stream of consciousness and kill ourselves for that one Idea. The Directors lose themselves and become the altar-ego of their characters, donning their voice, their body language, their thought process. The Cinematographers lose their own vision to don these characters’ POVs. The actors, more so, lose themselves completely, Kill themselves in order to wake up to another Reality and birth new faces, looks, bodies and souls. The same with the Music Directors and the Choreographers who launch into another world of sound and movement, of waves and vibrations that are so poignant that it becomes the supreme vessel to transport the audience to the final world of the Real-Unreal. And last but not the least, the Producers, the Channel guys, the Distributors, the nameless Poster-boys and much-forgotten Spot-boys, they all are, day in and day out, though much-unseen and behind the scene yet very-much in-front-of-the-line Dreamers, the Souls who are possessed by this very same Idea of the Unreal-turned-into-Real and vice versa. The struggle, the fight, the war, of Love, of Passion, of more-than-mere-merchandise and of the final Star-Studded Success… !

All for the sake of an Idea. One seed. One thought. One concept. One picture. One sound. One dash of color. It all begins from there and just as Cobb (De Caprio) in Inception says, “What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere.”  And then it goes on taking on a larger shape, a larger frame and a larger scale and the world of ‘Reel’ is Created…very much out of the ‘Real’. 

Are you Tired and Perplexed by this heavy-duty Deconstruction-Theory-like-Insipid explanation of ‘The Reel and the Real’??? Ahem… Excuse me! But you see, I too was possessed by an Idea… the Idea to shape and explain the whole dichotomous world of Cinema and TV as A Real Virus, A Resilient Bacteria, An Internal Enemy we are very much in Love with, the Self-Destructive Process of Creation, forming itself out of the Real World, the Real experience and yet like Magic, having the charm to transport one to the Unreal. But no more! In our next discussion we will get down to a more ‘Real’ approach to Cinema, with our film reviews, TV talks and any other interesting news from the world of Entertainment. So, till then, Dreeeeaaam Onnnnn of the Unreal, but with your feet grounded into the Reality! Because, we, the Dream Merchants, apologize for not being able to take any responsibility for your getting infected by some unseen yet potentially poignant virus created by us – by some Idea of the Real-Unreal!