Articles of Time Bomb - Page 7

ACP Pradyuman, played by Shivaji Satam, will no more be part of CID and CID Special Bureau. According to supervising producer Yash Patnaik, "Pradyuman's character had to be eased out because he was suspended from the CID force since his son Nakul (Rahil Azam) was found to have terrorist links."

The real reason seems to be Satam demanding a fee hike, which the producers refused. Satam was unavailable for comment.

Adds Patnaik, "Satam was the face of the show. But the viewing pattern and profile has changed. We had to induct young blood. Rajeev Khandelwal is very popular, plus he is not over-exposed, so we zeroed in on him to be the new face."

What about CID Special Bureau? "How can he (Satam) remain in Special Bureau? ACP Pradyuman is suspended from the CID force; that's that," Patnaik said.

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Birthday boy's dreams

On my birthday I would be shooting for my serial Time Bomb on the sets in Mumbai. As is their custom, there would be an informal cake-cutting formality during the break," says Saigal who has been busy shooting for his home-production, an Hindi movie Lotus Dreams — A Boy's Screams, with which he makes his directorial debut.

"Being a workaholic, I have completed over 75 per cent of my offbeat, yet hard-hitting, movie which is mainly about neglected and poor children's dreams. To make it topical, my movie begins with the Terrible Tuesday floods scenes that ravaged Mumbai city.

My cast actors include Salim Shah (he played his foster father in 'Kyunki...'), Shakti Singh, Ekta Mukherjee, Meghan, Mandhan and Munna, who have gone out of their way to help finishing the film.

One of these boys plays a chhota tapori character called Raajdhaani who is the fastest pickpocket trained by Salim's villainous character," he enthuses.

Isn't it true that he is hell-bent on casting former co-star Smriti Z Irani who played his mother in 'Kyunki...' as one of the central characters? "There is this rich social activist called Indrani who connects with the kids like their guardian-angel in the movie, and it perfectly suits Smriti's persona. The detailed script has already been sent to her and she has to revert back to me," says Saigal.

Will he, won't he?

The actor-turned-director, is in a dilemma whether he should face the movie-camera this time. 

"My script is too tight for me to grab any role and I am okay with the director in me refusing to cast me. But since my ardent fans would be disappointed, I am thinking of having a song picturised on me—-more like a male item number but minus the strip-tease," he explains with a chuckle.

Will Akash continue to act in the daily version of Time Bomb, once it is taken over by a new production unit? "Although Rajeev Khandelwal has expressed that he would not be interested once the serial changes hands, I have not taken a final call on this issue. But if they are willing to pay my hiked price I may continue. Let's see," he says, tossing his long mane with his patented  'jhatkaa'.

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Amrita nahin, Aamna

Says a close friend of Rajeev, "ITA approached Rajeev to do an item with Amrita Saluja (Roma of Time Bomb); and Aamna Shariff to do a number with Gurpreet Singh (the current Sujal).

However, Aamna told ITA she would prefer performing with Rajeev. Rajeev had even been sent a contract, but after that, ITA didn't get back to him.

At first, he didn't know who he was performing with; he simply knew that they wanted him to do something on stage. He found out that they wanted him with Amrita only three days ago, when Amrita herself told him," the friend adds.

Close to Rajeev

Why didn't Aamna want to perform with Gurpreet? Says Rajeev's friend, "It's not that she didn't want to perform with Gurpreet; she strongly felt that she would give a better performance with someone she is close to (Rajeev); the body language and comfort levels would be relatively superior.
In fact, she even questioned ITA about their concept. 'What do you want me to perform as — Kashish or Aamna? Surely, this is not a Star Parivaar Awards, where you are looking at Sujal and Kashish as a jodi.' At a certain point, Star Plus categorically told Aamna they did not want her to perform with Rajeev."

'Not well' excuse

When contacted, Aamna would only say, "I did not feel like attending." And Rajeev said, "I was not feeling well." When asked whether he would have preferred to shake a leg with Aamna, he chuckled, "Maybe next time." Anu Ranjan (president, ITA) chose to remain silent on the issue.

It's definitely not an easy game to keep audiences glued to the idiot box, day after day, week on week. Especially, in today's environment, where the landscape is getting more colourful with more channels, differentiated programming, newer formats and better production quality than ever before. Though on the one hand, it sounds like a win-win situation for the audiences, but, the flip side is a TRP crazy environment that serial makers can never trust and an extremely restless and rather disloyal audience.

Monday night, I was on Zee's much hyped Time Bomb after a long time. I was very disappointed to see the plot still stuck to where it was a few weeks ago. Terrorist Akaash Deep seems to be inventing novel ways of torturing the hero Rajeev Khandelwal along with his family, who have been held captive for weeks now. Beyond that, nothing much seems to be happening in the serial. Somehow, the show seems to be lacking in punch and needs to beef up its act.
All a far cry from the first few episodes, which looked very promising; there was fast paced, gripping footage along with the use of split screen technology. Then, the starcast too, looked very impressive with the likes of Rajeev Khandelwal and Akaash Deep. An international political thriller on global terror, set in an Indian environment, was something that has not been tried here before. All that initial frisson seems to have seeped away.

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