The show must go on...

Until it finally doesn’t; and leaves all its fans in mourning

So, it’s official. The sixth season of Downton Abbey, which is currently being filmed, will also be the final season of the show. NBC Universal, which owns the production company that produces Downton, has sent out an internal memo to staff to say that the drama is ‘approaching its natural conclusion’. So the ‘difficult decision’ to ‘wrap up production while the show is still at its peak’ had been taken.

This will be the last year that we will be able to follow the fortunes of the Crawley family, headed by the somewhat wishy-washy Earl of Grantham. Maybe we’ll finally find out if his eldest daughter, the widowed Lady Mary Crawley, succeeds in her quest for true love (the second time round). Or if the eternally star-crossed couple below stairs, Mr and Mrs Bates, will get a happy ending of their own. As for myself, I will just be happy if Julian Fellowes desists from killing off the formidable Dowager Countess of Grantham – played to perfection by Maggie Smith – who is the best thing about the show. I still bear the emotional scars from seeing Matthew Crawley brutally dispatched in the Christmas special some years ago. (Christmas, I tell you! Is nothing sacred any more?)

Yes, I agree, the show is mostly sentimental hogwash, with its rosy-eyed view of post-Edwardian England, where the upper classes are always honourable and decent and the working classes know their place (well, mostly). But such lovely hogwash it is to watch! Those beautifully-lit interiors, the lush English countryside, the perfect recreation of the period around the Great War; it is no wonder that the show has become something of a global phenomenon (of course, the Americans persist in calling it Downtown Abbey; but then, they would, wouldn’t they?).

But that said, I will be sad to see it go, with its idealized evocation of a gentler age. It was escapist fare, but escapist fare at the best; and which of us doesn’t enjoy a bit of respite from the realities of life?

I feel just as sad about the imminent end of yet another – but very different – period drama. Mad Men is as different from Downton Abbey as it is possible to get, set in the urban landscape of Madison Avenue in New York. But what both have in common is the faithful recreation of a certain point of time when society was in flux, depicted through the stories of its characters.

In Downton, the passage of time in the political world is marked by such events as the sinking of the Titanic, the break-out of the First World War, the post-war period, with references thrown in to such cataclysmic events as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. In the domestic sphere, we see Mrs Patmore struggling to cope with new-fangled kitchen contraptions and Mr Carson trying to make do with just the two footmen. Social flux is marked by Lady Sybil marrying a chauffeur and Lady Rose marrying a Jew (both social calamities at the time!).

Mad Men, for its part, documents the end of the 50s, when the certainties of American society with its commuting husbands, its Stepford wives, its 2.5 children, were gradually breaking down and the spirit of the Swinging Sixties was beginning to infect the land. So, Don Draper who starts out as the resident genius at his ad agency in the 50s is beginning to look a little ‘square’ by the time the Beatles invade America. Robert Sterling – true to form – is getting into the spirit of things by experimenting with LSD. And both Joan Holloway and Peggy Olson have managed to carve out independent careers, despite the misogyny and sexism prevailing at their work place, heralding the shape of things to come.

But now it’s time for Don Draper to smoke his final cigarette and walk off into the sunset, looking as moody as ever. And I will miss him just as much I will the extended Crawley family. Or indeed, as much as I have missed Walter White ever since Breaking Bad went off our screens. The only bit of good news in all this is that Julian Fellowes is said to be working on a prequel to Downton Abbey, set in America, which will tell the story of Robert and Cora, who we know as the Earl and Countess of Grantham. And that a spin-off of Breaking Bad, titled Better Call Saul, is here to tell us the back story of that archetypal sleazy lawyer, Saul Goodman.

What is it about certain TV shows that they exert such a powerful force on our imagination? Why do we get so hooked on some series as if we were in the throes of a real addiction?

I still remember staying awake till 5 am watching the early series of 24, because I simply could not wait until the following evening to see what happened next. Homeland was another show that induced a serious attack of binge-watching as did House of Cards (it helped that the entire season was dumped on Netflix in one go). And I wasn’t the only fanatic; the whole world appeared to be in the grip of an edge-of-the-seat excitement. Why, even the President of America, Barack Obama, pleaded on Twitter that nobody should post any spoilers until he had watched the show.

I’ve thought long and hard about it, but I can’t put my finger on what exactly makes these shows so special. Maybe if I binge-watch the latest series of Homeland, I will get some ideas. I promise to get back to you if inspiration strikes.

Feminist? Who, me?

Whether you answer yes or no, there is no denying the debt every woman owes to those who went before

I am always baffled by young (and not so young) women who proclaim proudly that they have ‘no time for feminism’ or who declare when prodded that they wouldn’t really describe themselves as ‘feminist’. Women like this tend to say things like, “I am not really one for all that bra-burning nonsense’. Or even the risible, “I am not a feminist; I am a humanist.” And then there are those who misunderstand the concept completely and protest that they are not into all this ‘man-hating’ business.

This column is written for the benefit of women like these. Women who live in a world that grants them rights that the feminist movement fought for and won (and which they now take for granted). Women who need reminding what their lives would be like if generations of feminists before them hadn’t fought for their place in society.

So here, in no particular order of importance, are just some of the things that feminism brought us. Just so that these non-feminist ladies know that whether they acknowledge it or not, they owe a huge debt to ‘bra-burning, women-lib types’.

• The right to exercise control over your own body. Hard as this may be to believe, there was a time when women had no say in whom they were married off to. They had no control over their reproductive lives. And while this may still be true of millions of Indian women in rural households, middle-class educated women in our cities today have the right to marry according to their own choice; choose the contraception of their choice; and have an abortion if it fails. The law now recognizes the woman’s right to her own body. And we have feminism to thank for that.

• The right to property: While women had limited property rights the world over (control was effectively exercised by either her father or her husband) in India women who inherited property were effectively barred from disposing of it on their own. This ‘limited interest’ was abolished only in 1956 by the Hindu Succession Act, which made women the ‘absolute owner’ of any property they owned, and gave daughters an equal interest in the estate of their fathers. 

• The right to your name: No longer is it taken as given that a woman has to change her surname when she gets married (or even her first name, as happened with some traditional households). She gets to decide what name she is known as; a symbolic victory but an important one nonetheless when it comes to establishing her own identity. What’s more, thanks to a long legal battle waged by author and editor Githa Hariharan, women also have the right to be named as the ‘natural guardian’ of their children, a prerogative earlier restricted to men.

• The right to vote: We tend to take this right for granted in India, because women have had the vote ever since we gained independence in 1947. But this was only possible because of the suffragettes and suffragists movements – run entirely by feminists – that campaigned for years on end in Western democracies to get women the right to vote. 

• The right to work: Outside the home, that is. No longer do women have to be chained to the kitchen stove – unless that’s where they want to be. They have the freedom to go out into the world and earn their own living, using the skills they have developed in school and college (and there too, it is feminism that has made it possible for women to be educated at the same level as their male peers).

• The right to equal pay for equal work: You know all that brouhaha about Jill Abramson being fired as executive editor of the New York Times because she asked to be paid the same salary as her male predecessor? The story was quickly denied, but the controversy would have been a non-starter if it wasn’t for feminism. Not only would a woman never have been appointed to one of the top jobs in an organization but there would have been no question about paying her as much as a man would earn. You want to know what a pre-feminist workplace would look like? Just watch an episode of Mad Men. Do you really want to live in a world in which Joan Holloway reports to Roger Stirling and Peggy Olson to Don Draper? And all the while, combatting casual sexism – and the odd grope and grab – at the workplace? No, I didn’t think so.

So, all you ladies describing yourselves as non-feminists, unless you actually prefer being bare-foot and pregnant, slaving away all hours in the kitchen, with not a rupee (let alone a salary or a house) to call your own, and with no rights over your bodies or your children, maybe you’d do well to acknowledge the debt to those that went before and fought the good battle so that you didn’t need to.

57 channels and nothin’ on…

Why can’t Indian TV give us the equivalent of Homeland, Newsroom, Mad Men or Modern Family?

As you may have gathered from my occasional references to my TV-viewing habits, I am a big fan of TV shows. Offer me a choice between a Hollywood/Bollywood blockbuster and a box-set of the most recent TV series and I will always plump for the latter. And every single time I spend the evening feasting on the best Western television has to offer, I set off for bed wondering why we can't do anything half as good in India. 

Why is it that we don't have an indigenous Homeland, the cracker of a TV show that had the entire world on tenterhooks for its two-season run? Even President Barack Obama - who presumably knows a thing or two about tackling terrorism - is a fan, going so far as to invite Nick Brody (British actor Damian Lewis) to the White House for an official banquet. It's not as if we are starved of inspiration given the number of terrorist attacks that have pummeled us over the last decade or so. And yet, we don't have a single TV show that brings this alive on the small screen. The best we can do, apparently, is to have Anil Kapoor threaten a re-make of 24, the thrill-a-minute Jack Bauer series which has already run its course.

Then there's Newsroom, the Aaron Sorkin show about prime-time news programming. Despite a weak (and much too wordy) start it took off after a couple of episodes, bringing the dilemma of TV news networks home to us. How do you keep your news judgement and your integrity intact and still score in the ratings while competing with hysterical, jingoistic anchors who fall back on hype and sensationalism. This is a subject that is bound to resonate with Indian viewers given the amount of sound and fury on our prime-time news shows. And yet, there isn't a single Indian TV show that has strayed into this territory. Everyone is busy making saas-bahu serials, the tried-and-tested family melodramas that have become such a staple of entertainment programming.

But even family shows can pack a punch, as anyone who has ever watched Modern Family knows all too well. The show has wit, charm, and some of the best one-liners on offer. But it also offers us the portrait of a modern family, the jumble of trophy wife, stepfamilies, gay parents, adopted Asian baby, stay-at-home Alpha mom, klutzy dad, teenager going off the rails, nerd kids, which really shouldn't work but in some mad, out-of-control way, simply does. In its own laugh-out-loud funny way it gives us an insight into the changing landscape of American society.

And what do we have in India? Oh, we do family shows, all right. But what do they show us? A regressive, patriarchal world populated by large, joint families who live in big, imposing mansions, and spend all their time plotting and scheming against one another. The women wake up in the morning wearing full make-up, swan around in Kanjeevaram saris, brandishing their oversized mangulsutras to prove that they are truly ‘pativrata naris’. Their clothes, their jewellery, their lives, nothing has anything in common with us. It is almost as if these shows are set in a different era altogether.

Not that I have anything against different eras. I am a huge fan of Downton Abbey and Mad Men, both of which skillfully recreate a bygone world. In Downton Abbey you get the sense of a decaying Edwardian England in which the old certainties are crumbling quietly, leaving disquiet and anxiety in their wake. Mad Men evokes the New York of late 50s and early 60s, when the advertising men of Madison Avenue ruled the world and didn’t quite know how to cope with the incipient feminism in the air. Can you think of anything remotely like this on Indian TV? No, me neither. And more’s the pity.

Small vs silver

TV stars abroad may quality as A-listers; but in India they remain on the C-list


Over the last couple of years I’ve become a fan of Glee, the US television series set in all-American high school. And my favourite character is the cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester. So, imagine my joy when Jane Lynch – who plays crazy, driven Sue with a delightfully demented gleam in her eye – was chosen to host this year’s Emmy awards. And whatever the fashion fascistas may have thought of Jane’s frocks – cue shock and horror – I thought she did a bang-up job. (And that’s the way Seema sees it!)

But what struck me much more forcibly at the Emmys was the wealth of A-grade stars lined up on the red carpet. In fact, such was the glut of celebrity in the presentation hall that you searched in vain to see an unfamiliar face. There was Gwyneth Paltrow, who won a special award for her guest star turn on Glee. There was Kate Winslet, looking absolutely ecstatic at winning for Mildred Pierce. There was Christina Hendricks of Mad Men fame, her legendary curves poured into a shimmering dress that could barely contain them. It was easy to see that this was an A-list gathering – because almost every lady in the room could pass the litmus test of celebrity, with her cellulite and cleavage under the daily scrutiny of the tabloid press.

That’s what set me thinking. If I tuned in to see an equivalent awards show for Indian entertainment television – and yes, you’re right, I wouldn’t really – I would be hard-pressed to recognise a single star. Yes, there would be some faces which would look vaguely familiar. Was that Anandi what’s-her-name from Balika Badhu? Is that the actress who plays the eternal Savitri Bhabhi (not to be confused with the other, much-maligned Savita Bhabhi?
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The only faces I could place with some degree of certainty would be the stars of reality television – Rakhi Sawant, Dolly Bindra – but only because the news channels play them up every day in their entertainment shows. And even then I would be hard pressed to tell Veena Malik from Payal Rohatgi or Ashmit Patel from Sameer Soni.

Not because I am some sort of sad snob, but because our entertainment channels don’t really produce A-list stars. Our TV actors may have their 15 minutes of fame while their shows are doing well. But they soon fade away never to be heard of again. Who remembers Gracy Singh, for instance? Or Jassi of Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin? Or even Dakshaben from Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi? In fact, the only cast member of that iconic show who survives in our consciousness is Smriti ‘Tulsi’ Irani – and then only because she has since recast herself as a BJP politician and turns up on news channels regularly to give us the benefit of her wisdom.

The truth is that no matter how much transient fame our TV stars achieve during their all-too-brief careers, they never really graduate to the A-list. They never rate a glossy magazine cover, for instance. Nor are they ever signed up to endorse top-end products like sports stars and film actors are.

Contrast this to the kind of stardom that TV actors achieve in the America and Britain. The stars of Friends are still considered to be A-listers. Celebrity magazines are still obsessed with the love lives of Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox. Matt LeBlac may have flopped spectacularly with Joey, but he still has enough star value for a new show – Episodes – to be created around his real-life persona. More recently, the actors of Desperate Housewives and Mad Men have become bona fide stars. In fact, Eva Longoria’s wedding and subsequent divorce was accorded the same treatment as Tom Cruise’s nuptials to Katie Holmes.

In the UK, the stars of Downton Abbey are forever being written up in the press. The British show, The Only Way is Essex – better known as TOWIE – has attained near cult-status. And it’s not for nothing that the legendary British actor, Alec Guinness, followed up his role in Star Wars with the TV mini-series, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Across the Atlantic, such is the power of television that even big Hollywood stars think nothing of working in TV shows. At the height of her fame, Meryl Streep starred in a TV series, Angels in America; Glen Close did a magnificent job in Damages and The Shield; Robert Downey Jr dazzled in Ally McBeal; and Alec Baldwin continues to sparkle in 30 Rock alongside Tina Fey.

One measure of the power of these TV shows is how many A listers they can pull in as guest stars. Gwyneth Paltrow in Glee is perhaps the most famous one. But the last season of 30 Rock had Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Bono, Condoleeza Rice, Michael Keaton and Alan Alda come on as guest stars.

Contrast this with India when Bollywood actors only condescend to work in TV serials if their careers have completely collapsed. Otherwise, the only way you can tempt them on to television is to give them several crores to host a quiz show or a reality TV programme. So while Amitabh Bachchan is happy to front Kaun Banega Crorepati and Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt will do the honours for Bigg Boss, and Akshay Kumar will do his usual dare-devilry for Khatron Ke Khiladi, no A-list film actor will ever deign to act in a TV series.

In India, at least, it seems that television is doomed to remain the ‘small’ screen forever, while the biggies strut their stuff on the ‘silver’ one. And more’s the pity.