Life's a dance on reality TV

TELLY VISION

In one of the previous columns, I'd discussed how dance choreographer Saroj Khan's show Nachle Ve hadn't really worked wonders for me.

Following the column, I received polite emails from concerned PR executives telling me that the show was high on TRPs. I know, even kitchen sink dramas are great on TRPs but don't do much for me.

It's like this: some Hindi films are huge box office hits but I've wondered why they were released in the first place. Then, there are films which are genuinely good but vanish from theatres rather quickly "" just like model Padma Lakshmi, who jumps from southern Spain (tasting tapas) and lands in the middle of Hyderabad for biryani in her Planet Food show (Discovery Travel and Living).

Getting back to dance, if there's a show that's got me glued to the telly these days, it's got to be So You Think You Can Dance on AXN. It's the sort of show that's so slick, with contestants who obviously have a spring in their feet and elastic bodies. I watched it last week, my jaw defying the law of gravity and hanging mid-air at a performance which, to my greatest surprise, was presented by one of the bottom three contestants.

Seriously speaking, the show is a crash course in different dance forms, including New Age Hip-hop (I hate it), the Jive, Samba, Ballet, Contemporary, besides "B-boying", a form that I have heard of for the very first time.

What works best for me on the show, however, is the unusual pairing of contestants: a girl trained in Ballet, for instance, is paired with a boy trained in Hip-hop to perform, say, a Samba routine. And while an untrained eye (mine, for example) will miss the finer nuances, it's the judges on the show who minutely point out the tiny details that the performance may have missed out on.

Since we're already on this reality trail, I also find it fascinating how shows are extending their repertoire to include almost every aspect of human life in the "reality TV" fold.

In one of the earlier columns, I had written about the iconic American Family, one of the first US-based, reality shows aired in the '70s where seven members of the Loud family allowed cameras, and the entire US, to get a glimpse of their lives. Lance Loud, a family member on the show, for instance, announced his gay status on the show.

Having watched at least a few episodes of Wife Swap USA on Discovery Travel and Living more recently, I couldn't help but wonder how children who featured in the numerous episodes of the show would grow up to revisit their parents and their decisions to change their respective "mommas" "" even if it was just for a period of two weeks.

I particularly remember watching this episode where a lady from a devout Christian family enters a family where drugs and rock-n-roll rule. What was even better was the lady from the rock-n-roll house entering the other party's home.

The result was a hilarious mess up of "values, morals and principles", stuff that both the sides claimed to know so well. The rockstar, for instance, introduced the devout, carol-singing family to heavy metal, grunge and what have you, while the other lady looked aghast when she saw free-flowing alcohol instead of water on the dining table.

The good part is that no one wins on the show. Instead, everyone takes home what they think is best for everyone else. Carols, for instance, started playing along with heavy metal in the rock house, which became remarkably clean after the entry of another spouse. Likewise, in the other family, the man of the house started helping around more and often, while also spending more time with the family.

Wonder if we will ever have the appetite to try an Indian version of Wife Swap?

(abhilasha.ojha@bsmail.in)