Hyderabad: Small screen entertainment begins to pale in homes

Hyderabad: From an ideal situation when time-deprived couch potatoes were ruing the fact that there were too many programmes and too little time for them to watch it, the wheel seems to have turned full circle. With over half-a-dozen streaming platforms in English, Hindi and regional languages adding new programmes and reviving old ones, the bounty was impressive, to begin with, a month ago, as the lockdown began.

'I was overjoyed when I found time during afternoons to catch up on recent movie additions and OTT originals which were specially introduced during this period. While the supply of new Telugu and Tamil movies was consumed fast, I had to pick and choose English web episodes as many of them were either mystery or action which I am not comfortable watching for a long time' said Naveena, a young techie who managed to balance her work-from-home and on-screen entertainment for the first few weeks.

With the better ones being released after a five-week period, many southern films had already been featured in the must-watch list from the middle of March. As the number of new releases have reduced, so did the chances of watching fresh offerings in the local language. 'My uncle told me to get systematic and watch films of superstars in a timetable format.

I did that and have caught up with the biggest hits of our heroes from the beginning of the millennium as I was too young when they were originally released. As I am up-to-date with the films, now I watch songs on corona virus and memes about the dreaded disease, as the onscreen entertainment is stagnating' rues Ramakrishna, another youngster who is stuck within his home.

Sub-titles have no doubt opened up new language films for the audience and it is not uncommon for WhatsApp messages to recommend a particular film in a particular language. Yet, the local language offerings have all been covered and there is nothing new coming up to match with the aggressive watching preferences of the audience.

'Our online interactions through Zoom and other platforms are much more enjoyable' informs Naveena, who has a scheduled webinar of sorts on different topics over a week. 'It has made all of us prepare hard and have meaningful discussions' she concludes. All play and no work can indeed get tiring.