April 13, 1998

Tired of endless family feuds and boardroom battles, viewers lap up racy crime thrillers.

By Namrata Joshi

Every full moon night, innocent people get knocked off by a serial killer. A rookie psychologist stumbles upon the identity of the killer. But before he can reach the police, he is bumped off. So, whodunit? This is the new kind of story on Indian television these days. The formula is the same -- victims, a closed group of suspects, suspense, a few red herrings along the way and a twist in the tale. The small screen has discovered the world of mystery and suspense: Saturday Suspense, Woh and Kohra. What's more, a new crop of detectives also seems to have taken over. Each channel has its own private eye. If Zee TV has a Mohandas, BA LLB, Sony has ACP Pradyumn in CID. Star Plus boasts of Yeh Hai Raaz. Then there's Bullet and Vakeel Jasoos on Doordarshan (DD2) while Panther continues to stalk Home TV. In the pipeline is the slick and glamorous Private Investigators, being shot in Canada.

These serials are not just growing in number, their ratings too are shooting up. CID, with television rating points of 9.8 (according to marg intam, week ending February 15) within four weeks of hitting the screen, is perched at No. 2 on Sony. And Mohandas, with rating points of 6.3, is one of the most upwardly mobile new shows on Zee. Serial makers are pleasantly surprised at the way detectives are catching on. "The audience needs some time to start relating to the detective. But in 10 episodes we are already fetching the kind of ratings we would have in 20," says Pankaj Kapur, the producer, director and lead player of Mohandas.

Kapur, in an earlier avatar, had achieved near cult status with Karamchand, the carrot-chomping private eye. Other TV detectives have included the Bengali bhadralok Byomkesh Bakshi and the straight-faced Commander. But never before have so many detectives jammed the airwaves at one go. The reasons aren't hard to find. Viewers are just fed up with the usual bedroom-boardroom formula serials that drag on endlessly. One early hint came from the enormous popularity of horror shows -- The Zee Horror Show, now rechristened Anhonee, remains amongst the channel's most popular serials while Aahat is No. 1 on all channels. And what began as an exploration of the paranormal has now peaked with thrillers. "The story and how you tell it is crucial," says Manish Goswami, who has produced 26 episodes of Saturday Suspense. While soaps carry on endlessly week after week, thrillers reach the denouement in just one or two episodes. "They keep you glued and there's no need to religiously follow them for weeks," says Goswami. If soaps are about stretching a basic plot, thrillers are about condensing it. "Everything has to be brought to a logical end in an episode or two," says B.P. Singh, producer-director of CID and Aahat.

Most producers of thriller serials agree that a sizeable chunk of their viewers are teenagers. "They are very inquisitive and keep wondering what might have happened and who could have done it," says Kapur. The other segment comprises older people, who have a lot of time on their hands. Once a serial has roped in these two groups, success is almost guaranteed since the rest of the family is bound to follow suit.

Another reason why this genre is doing well on TV is that it has been ignored in cinema. Films like Bees Saal Baad and Apradhi Kaun have been few and far between. And the only film detective who became a legend was the Charminar-smoking Pradosh Mitra alias Feluda in Satyajit Ray's Sonar Kella, with 14-year-old Tapesh as his Watson. "In mainstream Hindi cinema action dominates, whereas detection is a game of intelligence," says media analyst Sudeesh Pachauri. Similarly, Hindi pulp literature, which has had popular crime writers like Ibne Shafi, Om Prakash Sharma, Colonel Ranjeet and Ved Prakash Sharma, is also fast disappearing from the market. And it's the small screen that is stepping in to fill that gap.

The detective bug seems to have bitten non-Hindi channels as well. Star Plus, which was earlier the preserve of soaps like The Bold and the Beautiful and Santa Barbara, has not only given the viewers a heavy dose of local programming, its imports also reflect their preference for thrillers and detective serials. In the past one year, it has increased the number of programmes in this genre to include Murder, She Wrote, Heartbeat, Due South and the still popular X Files. Even Baywatch seems to be awash with elements of crime and detection.

At the centre of these shows is the detective himself. Tele-detectives come with trademark mannerisms. Mohandas is India's answer to Hercule Poirot. If Poirot had waxed moustache, MD has gelled, slicked-back hair. They also share many eccentricities. "The audience has a certain image of the detective. I have tried not to let them down and so have stylised the character," says Kapur. But he has also tried to make him more defined and rounded. He is diabetic but loves eating sweets; he suffers from insomnia and is scared of crossing roads. He adores kids -- and also his jeep. His wife Mohini is as inseparable and integral a part of his life as the game of detection. The idea is to trace the roots of the crime and keep the human angle alive. "My chief detective is a normal, sensitive human being," says Kapur.

CID's usp is also reality and authenticity. "In one of the episodes, the forensic expert recreates the face of the victim by examining the skull," says Singh, a pioneer whose earlier works include the hugely popular Marathi detective serial Ek Shunya Shunya. The producer-director, however, doesn't let the technical authenticity detract from the basic human interest of his serials: in CID, the personal traits and family life of the detective also creep in. One of the incidents shows ACP Pradyumn caught in a dilemma when he finds that his son might be involved in a crime.

Karan Razdan's popular serial Tehkikaat brought Vijay Anand on to the small screen as an elderly private investigator. Now with Yeh Hai Raaz, he's trying to bring in a touch of Remington Steele. The serial has Ruby Bhatia in the lead as a cop along with Aly Khan, who plays a convict. The two hate each other but are forced to work together since Khan provides valuable inside information about the world of crime. Bhatia conveniently slips into different guises -- a murder on the fashion ramp has her dressed to kill, giving the viewers plenty of leg to ogle at. Innovation is the key. Directors keep trying out ways to offer something different to the viewers. "We keep shifting base -- from murder to theft to blackmail -- and now CID will also probe a bride-burning case," says Singh. Razdan plans to bring in the extra-terrestrial element in Yeh Hai Raaz.

Ironically, even as these serials try to be different, they are in danger of becoming as predictable as any other soap. The eccentricities of screen private eyes often pale into stereotypes. And somewhere along the line, organised violence and blood and gore have taken over. "There's very little that is subtle or sophisticated," laments Pachauri.

But finding new plots is no problem for Razdan. "I can have a crime ready even in the middle of the night." He believes that all of us have criminal tendencies. Dig deep enough and you'll find them. Elementary, isn't it? Point is: the viewers agree, but for how long?

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