We all have been watching TV shows from enough to realize we may have watched all of the shows that are airing or the ones that will air.

Every show starts with a promo that promises it has a story and a plot that’s different than the rest of the shows. First six months you feel that taste and freshness but as soon as a story hits 100 episodes, it starts falling down the trap. The trap of the recycled tracks and stories. Few examples are like fifteen years of TV serving stories involving kitchen politics, revenge drama and well marriages –  sometimes arranged, sometimes forced, sometimes accidental but never normal.

TV follows a pattern- a trend gets hit on one show, every other show before you know it, is following the same pattern. The shows have nothing new to offer. The same reworked tracks are often shown years after years.

The question why this happens? Why are makers who are supposed to be creative are serving the audiences sub standard entertainment?

Leap is escape route:

The best part is when makers do not find any way to turn the story, a leap comes in the story and there you go with same thing again. They come up with a leap and same formulas is repeated again with new star cast.

Always having twin, always same face and always bad:

When the world is obsessing over the magnum opus kind of shows like, ‘Game Of Thrones’, heart-touching ‘This Is Us’, or a twisty fairy tale like ‘Once Upon A Time’ or ‘Narcos’. Indian Television is giving us where dead people come alive or has a twin who is a loafer somehow finds the family trying to con or take revenge.

Journey of woman from strong to damsel-in-distress:

Most shows starts with a female character who is shown strong and opinionated suddenly becomes a sculpture of sacrifice when a man tries enforce his love or marriage or manhandle her. Then Beauty And The Beast happens.

No matter what, its Mills and Boons type stories:

A wealthy man who is emotionally damaged and is angry resorts to the woman to heal himself. The man has to be rich, the girl has to of average background because in reel-ity girls father have no right to be affluent.

Obsession of Evil Queen:

The big problem is while men are shown thick friends and we have been given some beautiful bromance over the period of time. Women characters are still used as plot devices to instigate fights and plotting. Shows that start with the theme of female friendship quickly go down the route where one friend turns against another for love or family. This remains a problem with even the most popular shows.

What is original plot, wait, where is original plot?:

Sometimes, just to keep a show on air the whole trajectory on which the original plot was based on is either changed or is lost. Something that happened with shows like ‘Sasural Simar Ka’ or ‘Kumkum Bhagya’.

If you try to think, you will see that every show at one or other time has had the exact same tracks of someone getting kidnapped and the lead rescuing that person or the other lead. Someone trustworthy plotting against his own loved one due to jealousy or greed or revenge. Sometime same production houses in their different shows repeat the same stories too.

Why is this happening? What is the reason that creatives use the same tried and tested formula to rock TRP charts? Why are writers don’t let their creative minds come up with something exciting? Watching TV shows are like getting the same wine in different bottles or like you might order chinese but the restaurant serves you curry. The only option is you can either eat the given food or leave.

It’s not like TV shows who have dared to be different haven’t worked. A show like ‘Yeh Un Dinon Ki Baat Hai’ made its mark because of how different it awas from the rest of the show airing. Audiences raved about a show like ‘Beyhadh’ which was all about a character who had physcopath tendencies. There have been logical shows with great concepts that have stuck to its theme till the end and delivered great content such as ‘Kuch Rang Pyaar Ke Aise Bhi’, ‘Kaisi Yeh Yaarian’, ‘Dehleez’. Even now TV is making changes in baby steps with shows like, ‘Sanjivani’, ‘Patiala Babes’, ‘Kahaan Hum Kahaan Tum’.

We hope these small changes result in something big and we get to see more shows with different themes and concepts. Where every audience can find a show as per his or her own taste.