A rendezvous with spoofs

Parodies of popular shows and personalities are becoming the flavour of the season on Indian television.

Try this on a Sunday night. Switch on your television and watch a few minutes of Rendezvous with Simi Garewal on Star World at 9.30 pm.

Now grab the remote, switch to MTV India and watch VJ Cyrus Sahukar babble away on a delightful show called Rendezvous with Semi Girebaal. The spoof on the original show is a hit and if Ashish Patil, V-P and GM (creative and content), MTV, is to be believed, "we've beaten the original hollow".

On the MTV show Sahukar, decked in white, bounces, pouts, looks longingly, locks his fingers (you know, that well-manicured look), gazes into oblivion, bats his eyelashes, smiles and eats his lipstick (that's another story) while listening to his celebrity guests like Kannu Malik (read: Anu Malik), Funmohan Singh (that's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for you) and George Tush (need we elaborate) to name just a few.

"I will hold your hands," mocked Semi during a recent show featuring duplicates of music directors Himesh Reshammiya and Anu Malik, while on the real show at almost the same time, Simi Garewal, in all seriousness, held Hrithik Roshan's hands, curled her lips and drawled, "I love you."

Elsewhere too, spoofs seem to be the flavour of the TV season. Sunil Grover, an actor who is doing a spoof-based show on Filmi, Sahara television's film channel, clarifies, "Spoofs have been around for a long time, and especially in the advertising fraternity it has been a favourite theme." Grover should know. Within 24 hours of Shahrukh Khan's latest Pepsi TV commercial getting released, he acted in its spoof, shot for a Sprite commercial.

He laughs, "In a single day we shot the ad. Since spoofs need to be topical, there was a desperate need for the Sprite ad to break on the small screen." Maybe he's right. As soon as the new Coke ad featuring Aishwarya Rai (dressed in a red salwar suit) hit the small screen, a spoof from the the house of Pepsi was released by ad agency JWT.

If spoofs have existed for so long, why do we feel that the trend has suddenly picked up? "I would agree that suddenly more and more programmes are thriving on this medium of satire," says Shailesh Kapoor, head, marketing and content, Filmi. The new channel launched by Filmi has at least three programmes that are spoof-based shows.

"It was a conscious decision to launch spoof-based shows," he says, adding, "You don't want to see real actors all the time and there are certain questions that the real stars will never ever answer." Which is why a Shahrukh Khan becomes Rukruk Khan and Salman Khan ends up as a Balwaan Khan talking incessantly about "buck-ing up in a life after jail".

Kapoor says, "Spoofs work because it is a tried-and-tested formula. You can't go wrong, especially if you have a good script and talented actors."

But what if jokes backfire? What if celebs don't like what they see? "It is all done in good humour, it is never our intention to hurt anyone," clarifies Patil, who says MTV has, for a long time, been carrying out "spin-offs" on Bollywood celebrities with shows like Fully Faltu and more recently Pidhu the Great, and of course, Semi Girebaal.

"Next will be a spoof on Aamir Khan and Nana Patekar," says Patil, adding, "it is just a way of reinventing humour." He says the channel doesn't like getting static and works on a 13-week cycle after which there is a change in the programming strategy. That's the reason why Chito Chat also changed and was given a new look by introducing Pidhu the Great (a character based on the flamboyant cricket commentator Navjot Singh Sidhu).

"Pidhu is an Indian character," defines Patil, "as opposed to Chito, who was an international character. As far as similarities between Sidhu and Pidhu are concerned, well, Sidhu is fantastic and it is a pleasure to base a character on him."

Interestingly, Cyrus takes nearly two hours to get ready for the Pidhu character and much less time to get into the garb of Ms Semi. If rumours are to be believed, Cyrus even waxed his legs for the Semi Girebaal show.

While anchors are taking so much time to sink into their respective "spoof" characters, how are the real celebrities reacting as channels take a dig at them? "I think Simi (Garewal) aunty is sweet, she is VJ Cyrus' (Broacha) neighbour and till now she hasn't beaten him up so I presume she isn't too angry," quips Patil.

Simi may be a sport, but music director Anu Malik is certainly annoyed at the spoofs on him. "I haven't seen any of them but I think it is disgusting that people make fun of those who work so hard. I pity such people and abhor channels that thrive on making caricatures of respected individuals like myself and Simi Garewal," fumes Malik. Would he sue the channels? "If things go completely out of hand then yes, and if by mistake channels drag my family into it, then god save these channels," he warns.

Grover reacts, "Newspapers have caricatures, similarly channels have spoofs; celebrities should be sporting enough to laugh at themselves." Reshammiya, who seems to be a favourite on all spoof shows, is mixed in his reaction. He jokes, "Spoofs are ultimately made on legends. It really doesn't bother me."

Channel heads promise they are careful and have certain rules for such shows. "We don't drag families or make personal comments and we absolutely don't get nasty," says Patil.

If only the celebrities would take it in the right spirit.