Mission Ustad on 9x Entertainment Channel is unique. Being an AR Rahman fan, one didn’t want to miss the genius on the small screen. The format of this ’reality’ show is different. You do not have ordinary people with extraordinary dreams of making it big in Bollywood. Rather, a bunch of established singers vie for the panel’s approval for their choice of songs. The idea is to create awareness about the UN Millenium Development Programme (something Rahman is deeply involved with), and besides Rahman, there is Javed Akhtar and the lovely Lara Dutta on the panel. Hosted by Simone Singh (pleasure to see the charmig lady on the tube after a long time).
Partcipants inlcude Kailash Kher, Mahalakshmi Iyer, Naresh Iyer, Shweta Pandit, Vasundhara Das, Mohit Chauhan, Roop Kumar and Sonali Rathod. One of the episodes had Sonali and Roop Kumar Rathod face a lot of flak for their choice of song. As did Mohit Chauhan and Vasundhara Das. Rahman looked crestfallen when the singers chose ’dark’ and sometimes ’personal’ and romantic’ songs, since the task is to sing a song about hope and something that will mirror the condition of the suffering masses. In fact, the producers of this show have a tough job, it seems. To pull off a bi-weekly show that has to be entertianining, yet thought provoking and serious is quite a challenge. As for the participants, how do you sing about poverty, inspire, look glamorous, entertain and impress the judges as well?
(Maybe the ex-Miss India-Universe Lara Dutta has the answer).
But honestly, the overall production quality is far from satisfactory. For starters, the makeup guys seem to have gone berserk making both Mahalakshmi and Sonali look ghoulish with all the pancake and glitter. The strange lighting and unflattering camera angles do not help either. The audio quality is extremely poor. Everytime the artistes go a little off key, it gets amplified. With Rahman on the show, we expected much better.
Del.Icio.Us Tags: TV REVIEW: Mission Ustad on 9X
Technorati Tags: TV REVIEW: Mission Ustad on 9X
