The stage was set, the setting near perfect with Netflix as your channel partner, the biggest Indian stars willing and ready, the best available talent pool in the country both in front-of and behind the cameras, big budgets, top notch marketing and more and yet ‘The Great Indian Kapil Show’ is at best bland and boring.
Episode#2, season#2 featuring Junior NTR , Saif Ali Khan and Jhanvi Kapoor aired recently on Netflix. While they were there to promote their film ‘Devara’, we watched for some unhindered laughter. But boy were we disappointed!
The introduction itself was a damp squib, we know the stars, we like them that is why we tuned into the show guys, who looks forward to such a chaploos type introduction?
The show went downhill from the word go and while we were expecting a saucy and sassy show, what we got was Kapil cracking North-South dull jokes that just didn’t land.
The new character, Chef Manju, introduced in season#2, does nothing to elevate the show. Rajiv Thakur was given more screen time and guest actor, Soundous Moufakir danced on the song of Devara.
Sadly, the show hit a new low when Rajiv Thakur took the stage to perform a poorly written gig.
Infact, Kapil tried to replicate a popular ‘The Graham Norton Show’ segment where they show the insta feeds of the guests on the show and read some extremely funny reactions and comments made by fans. This too ended up being stiff and arduous, because, Kapil is hell bent on swarming his guests with needless compliments in every sentence.
This just shows what little effort is actually being put in to churn out stuff that should actually entail at least few laughs!
Infact it were the guests who tried to get a little tongue in cheek every now, especially Junior NTR who actually made some rather cheeky and fun comments. Yet Kapil’s one-liners just didn’t hit the mark.
The only relief came after about 35 minutes into the show, when Krushna abhishek, Kiku Sharda and Sunil Grover rescued the guests and the show with their 10-15 minutes act. Krursha as Raj Mata, Kiku Sharda as Motappa (Katappa) and Grover as SS Rajagoli were reasonably funny with Grover stealing the show.
The fact that show is uncomfortable and too formal was evident from Kapil’s body language, the guests reactions, Archana’s unnecessary laughter even during matter-of-fact discussions and the audience being shown clapping mindlessly and rolling with laughter when nothing in the show was actually funny!
