Yours truly often catches a few snippets of the plays being broadcast before prime time while enjoying a cup of tea. Unfortunately, these productions continue to touch new lows in their quest for TRPs.

Television is a field dominated by the fairer sex. It appears that the plays are written for, by and of women. The objective seems to be to attain new lows in denigrating and belittling the women in the plays because, apparently, that is all that the viewers at this hour are interested in watching.

The mentality and mindset of the females lapping up these substandard productions is not hard to gauge, judging from the content being churned out.

In one particular play, it was mortifying to see how, in all innocence, a seemingly educated and sensible woman tries to foil her sister-in-law’s chances (a divorcée) of remarrying by casting aspersions on her character in the presence of the family of a potential suitor. The ladies are extremely quick to label her as a woman of questionable character, in addition to being a divorcée. This leads to an ugly confrontation and the women walk off.

Instead of empowering women and showing them as strong individuals in their own right, many plays aired before prime time bank on portraying the fairer sex as conniving, manipulative females who derive some sort of sadistic pleasure out of making other women suffer.

The women writing these plays are playing to the ‘masses.’ Obviously, they are of the view that the viewers of these plays delight in seeing women conspiring, planning and plotting against one another. The vamp in one is the victim in another and it appears to be a game of musical chairs.

Usually, clichéd dialogues, one-dimensional characters and hackneyed and unimaginative plots dominate the screen before the prime time slot. The female characters in these plays do not mind portraying regressive characters and are content to play it by the book without considering the impact on the society.

How can one expect things to get better for women in he society if the visual media makes no effort to revamp their image and continues portraying them as regressive women whose only aim in life is to get married? By showing scenes of domestic violence and verbal abuse, in addition to desperate females running after married men, is there anything left? Women in these productions, it seems, are reduced to mere caricatures without an ounce of dignity or self-respect.

I keep wondering about the women who write such sub-standard content and the actresses who agree to portray such regressive and superficial characters. Should our stories not portray the far more serious social issues plaguing the society like child abuse, drug abuse, cybercrime, corruption, nepotism, deteriorating moral values and the growing materialism in the society? What about plays depicting how the education and health sectors have been hijacked by the private sector and how much of the visual media has emerged into a huge mafia?

Amidst all this, a private television channel emerged as a breath of fresh air. The plays aired here were made on a wide variety of subjects rather than the typical love triangles or family politics. Hopefully, the other media channels will up their game and smell the coffee and rather than always opting for tried and tested options, push the envelope and venture into unknown territory.

Quite a few miniseries were seen this year, ushering in a novel form of storytelling. The genre of crime thrillers was also explored in less than six months. Finally, we see novel plots and complex storylines with strong female characters shown on screen rather than the conventional, passé and done-to-death roles that the plays aired before prime time seem to thrive on.

As the world changes, this should be reflected in our television series.Rather than the bigoted and outdated mindsets, which appear to be the mainstay of some of these productions, a conscious effort should be made to enhance and broaden our outlook and perspective.

Will that happen or is that a far cry? Before the arrival of the new channel, it might have seemed improbable if not impossible but competition is always good, for the consumer, at least.

Rather than taking the viewers for granted, as the culture and demographics of the society shift, a cultural and technological quantum shift has taken place. Let’s keep pace with the rapidly changing societal values. Else, like old technology, these serials will soon be discarded.

The viewers today have far more choice and access to material from all over the world via OTT platforms. OurTV drama has to unlearn and relearn or be left behind as the world marches on without looking back.

The writer is an educationist. She can be reached at gaiteeara@hotmail.com

Women in these productions, it seems, are reduced to mere caricatures

without an ounce of dignity