Recipe for a Mega TV Serial

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Written by Vijay P Nair
Sunday, 27 April 2008

Last Updated ( Sunday, 27 April 2008 )

Recipe for a TV serial? You might ask. Yes, for every food preparation there is recipe. TV Serial is also a preparation – a food for eyes, or food for thoughts. Now let us examine what ingredients go into making a popular TV serial.

First of all you need a channel for telecasting it. Then get some gullible advertisers to sponsor your work. Bribe someone in the higher ups to get a prime time for the serial.

Once you could achieve that, you have done half the job. Now sign on a few out of job cine artistes to do different roles. They would be too eager to remain in the limelight.

The most important ingredient for a mega serial, however, is technicians. They are pretty costly, but you can’t do a serial without them. Just remember that a story is not needed for a mega serial. You can develop each day’s ‘story’ as you shoot the scenes, because as how long the advertisers sponsor your serial, you have to pull on with some kind of yarn.

Ready? Let us start shooting.

As you know most serials begin with a long song sequence while credit titles pass by. That takes care of first ten minutes. Add some advertisements for five minutes. Now ask yourself. Do I have a screenplay? You’ve? Good. You don’t have? Still better. (Because we don’t need a screenplay!)

The following recipe is only a sample. You can use it successfully by replacing the characters without changing much of the settings.

The title of our serial is BENIGN COW. (Gentle reader, just remember, cow is only symbolic. You can name it HUMBLE WOMAN, or just WOMAN, because only a woman stories are destined to become a mega serial). Let the camera pick up a serene village. Show that the sun is just breaking. Take a close up of a middle aged man carrying a bucket, walking towards the cow shed. (Cut) Show some advertisements. Solid 5 minutes goes. Then return to the scene again. The man unties a calf and lets it to drink milk from its mother’s udder for sometime. (Play light music.) A song may be added here for effective child-mother relationship. At the end of the song, the milkman removes the calf from its mother, and milks the cow. Camera shows a bucket full of milk. The milk man is an honest man. He does not add any water. After milking, he takes some hay from the hay sack, and offers it to the cow. Close up of the benign cow. (Cut) Add more advertisements. The man walks with the milk towards the house… The door is ajar. He looks at the door for a long moment. (Cut again. Let us keep the audience guessing what would happen next).

End of episode No. 1

Episode 2. – Song for ten minutes. Then advertisements. Show a few clippings from the previous episode for recapitulation (because the viewers are dumb and dimwits. They need constant reminders). That would take away 3 more minutes. Add a string of advertisements. 5 minutes. Now show the man with a bucketful of milk entering the kitchen through the back door. (No surprises await him there. The audience might feel disappointed. But we can’t help it. They don’t know that we have no story to tell.) Calls his wife. “Gowri, Gowri”. (The audience would mistake that he is calling the cow.) Instead his wife named Gowri appears a little latter, sleepy, attempting to tie up her hair, abandon it, and receives the milk bucket from her husband. She leisurely measures the milk to see whether the cow has given the agreed quantity of milk. (cut) Add advertisements for 5 minutes. Show the woman washing a few bottles, and filling them with milk. Hands over the milk bottles to the man. The man immediately leaves on a rickety cycle to deliver the milk to the neighbouring houses and hotels. Add some dialogues with the neighbours’ wives and servant maids. Remember, this is a lady’s story. Show the face of an old woman looking at the milk man suspiciously. (Cut)

End of episode 2.

The audience would wonder why the woman looked at the milkman suspiciously, and wait for episode No. 3.

Episode No. 3.

Same as the earlier episode. Song, advertisements, clippings. Nothing happens. The mother in law was not looking suspiciously. She was just waiting for her morning tea. The milk man returns home.

Now you cannot keep the story in such a pastoral atmosphere. The audience would fall asleep, or switch over to another channel. We can’t afford that. So introduce villain, fight, policemen, court scenes. That would take the serial to next twenty episodes. Let us show in one episode, a man wearing a black mask breaking into one of the neighbouring houses in the wee hours of a morning. (cut)

And ends the episode there. The audience are now in tenterhooks. Is he a thief? Or a lover? Keep them guessing. We need to stimulate their interest in our serial.

In the next episode, show that the house was burgled. Tough looking policemen enter. Some tough dialogues are exchanged with the inmates and the characters present in the scene. They look under the sofa, behind the TV, over the almirah for the missing jewellery. But no, it is nowhere to be seen. Cut. Audience wait for next episode to know ‘who dun it’.

Episode 55 : The police picks up the milk man. The officer says the milkman is the only man who goes around in the morning. All other men are lazy. Only women get up early to do house chores. The story takes a dramatic twist here. The camera shows the police officer, policemen in the police station (that is actually another room in the milk man house). The poor milk man receives some blows from the policemen below his navel and he cries aloud. (A sad song here.) After the song, the milk man tells he knows who committed the burglary. (Audience might ask, why did he not tell that before?) Suspense. (Cut) Go to next episode.

The milk man tells the police that he has seen his neighbour going to that house in the early morning. Clippings from the earlier scene to show the man surreptitiously entering the house through the kitchen door. (3 minutes go.) Some kind of extra-marital affairs. (Twists and double twists) Audience wait for the next scene to know what would happen next.

The lady of the house realizes that the cat would be out soon. She goes to the police station and tells the officer coyly that there was no burglary. She had forgotten that she had kept the jewellery in a tin! So simple. Officer falls for that and lets the man go. The man vows to teach the milk man a good lesson. (Cut). Audience wait to see what good lesson the man was going to teach them. Episode 72 ends.

Now you would ask me what has happened to the Cow? Have we forgotten the benign cow? No, certainly we have not.

Once the fight the milk man and the neighbour ends, and when we are unable to go back to police for taking our episode further with another investigation, we will return to the cow. Cow is our central theme. In the next episode, we will show that a different milk man takes the cow to a meadow. (Different milkman, because the original milkman has got a lucrative film role and has submitted his resignation from the serial.) Just announce before the episode begins that this is the new husband. The audience would not care about switching of husbands).

At the meadow, the cow meets a buffalo!

Ha! Did you get any hint from this? (We get a new lease on life and can go after the buffalo.) Buffalo is gentle; eats grass without hurry, and in the evening, goes alone to another house. Camera picks up all those who are all living there. Who are all buffalo’s friends and enemies? The buffalo’s story should take next twenty episodes, until a butcher ropes it on its way to the house, and abducts. The villain enters! Episode No. 81 ends here.

Another police case, investigations. Now you can go after the villain and tell his side of the story, his boyhood, his poverty, his attempt to get a decent job… At the end, show our buffalo in the meat format. The audience will shed copious tears. Sentimental song. End of episode 153.

Now, hang a garlanded photo of the buffalo on the wall. Return to our benign cow. The cow goes and meets a sheep. Ha! Another story line develops. The story of the poor sheep. Innocent and small. Gives good milk. Show another milk man and his family. New story. The villain butcher comes along, and our sheep becomes another photo on the wall. More tears, more sad songs. Episode No. 205 ends.

But don’t worry. We have our cow. But it has become old. The cow tells its calf: “From now on, you must lead the story. It is our life line”, and falls dead. The vet doctor comes and declares. “Cardiac arrest. I’m sorry. I could do nothing. Sorry” Episode No. 303 ends. Audience feel sorry. Our popular cow is dead, and goes to bed without food. In sympathy with the cow. Yet they might feel sad that the story has ended without a proper sign off.

But our episode cannot end like that. The next day, the audience would be surprised to see that the serial Benign Cow is not ended after all. They feel elated. The young calf has taken over this coveted place. Young and vigorous, it could take the story line for many episodes. But once while trying to jump over a fence, our new cow is bitten by a dog. More suspense! What would happen to the dog? Would it die? But nothing happens. Our story takes a new turn and goes after the dog. The dog is an obedient animal. Very loyal. The cow and the dog ultimately become friends. That should take our episodes to 385.

Our new cow has a daughter calf, and the calf grows to another beautiful cow. The butcher takes away the new cow, but we have the daughter cow. It meets a number of animals and reptiles during its daily morning and evening walk. Each animal presents new dimensions to our story, and keeps our audience wondering what would happen next. Our serial goes from strength to strength, until the producer becomes pauper or the advertisers go bankrupt.

That is the time we should sing our national anthem… close down our unit, and call it a day. We need rest.

But if you think our audience could heave a sigh of relief, you are mistaken. There are other serials in the offing, ready to begin where our Benign Cow has let off. They might call the new serial ‘THE INNOCENT COW’ or something like that, because they cannot forget the influence cow has on the audience.

Let us therefore cross our fingers and pray for their poor souls.