Now, when the world is awaiting Friends Reunion with bated breath, it would be a disservice to its Indian fans if we don’t remind them of Friends’ Hindi counterpart titled Hello Friends.
The show was launched on Zee TV five years after the first season of the original Friends. Though its journey was quite short lived, from September 1999 to February 2000, it still managed to complete 26 episodes.
The makers copied the Manhattan formula and gave that an Indian spin and simply renamed Central Perk as Uncle Sam’s Café. Don’t frown guys, it was 21 years ago, we didn’t know much about the American popular culture back then!
Directed by Ajay Pal, the show featured Simone Singh as Sanjana, a character modelled on Monica. Similarly, Aparna Tilak, Maria Goretti, Cyrus Broacha, Nikhil Chinapa and Anil Dimbri played Rachel, Phoebe, Chandler, Ross and Joey. Their characters’ names were Nisha, Penny, Cyrus, Vikram and Rahul though. And guess who played Uncle Sam? Well, none other than Kunal Vijaykar.
In retrospective, Hello Friends might not look like a very exciting idea, but the makers actually tried their best for a great ensemble. Actors like Samir Soni, Mandira Bedi, Kishwer Merchant, Bhavna Balsavar and Rituraj Singh were the guest actors on the show. All these actors went in to become big names on Indian television.
The flashy colour combination and shooting within a fixed space was a new thing back then and many successful shows copied the formula later. Most of the jokes didn’t land though. Also, Indian mainstream shows hardly worked due to the constant background laughter. Is there any show other than Hum Paanch worked because of the background laughter?
In the hindsight, the chaos didn’t work the way it was supposed to be, but it wasn’t that bad a try, no?
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