Comedy Nights With Kapil started with a big bang and soon several other followed suit. Do the latest shows inspire us to make fun of others or is it only a healthy way to provide some laughter?
Why comedy?
Comedy Nights With Kapil was not everyone’s cup of tea, it had huge mass appeal like a Rohit Shetty film, and it quickly found a devoted audience
It was new (from the saas-bahu sagas) and unlike. The hungry prime time family audiences lapped it up. They were sick and bored of the romantic serials or the ones which showed women with make-up fighting over mere issues and devising schemes, all the time.
What the winner says
Everyone needs a good laugh at the end of the day, and the Hindi audiences wanted their own Comedy Central. Enter Kapil Sharma. And he delivered. With top actors as celebrity guests, the show quickly climbed to No 1 position. He kept the humour clean and chose subjects that would appeal to people from all backgrounds. Sharma wanted to be watched not only in the cities but in every part of India.
Says Sharma, “I wanted to put up a show that would interest both an Ambani and a rikshawala and that is the reason my show talks about the problems affecting a lot of people, such as inflation, milk and onion prices, etc,” he says. Sharma also believes that kids play a huge role in making stars out of performers, so it was important that the show also appeals to them. “Just like we remember Ramayana after so many years, I want the kids to remember my show for years to come,” he says.
The others followed
Many others followed suit with the latest show being ‘Mad in India’ with Gutthi, the character from Kapil’s show finding his own footing.
The fat and thin jokes
Aristotle, said, ‘We laugh at inferior or ugly individuals, because we feel a joy at feeling superior to them.’ What does that say about Kapil who almost entirely, pokes fun at people who are too fat or too thin.
Kapil’s fat/thin jokes seemed accidental at first. Now one sees them in every episode. The show has invoked laughter but the question is for how long will the audience laugh at the same jokes?
