Many times, it so happens that you wait for a movie or a show with so much anticipation, that you set really high standards. When it finally comes, and it does not live up to the expectations, it really breaks your heart. That’s exactly what we felt about Comicstaan, the all-new show on Amazon Prime, which is hunting for the next big stand-up comedian of India.
let’s talk about the positives.
We really liked the format of the show where every judge mentors the participants in their genre – Biswa (anecdotal comedy), Tanmay (topical comedy), Sapan (observational comedy), Kaneez (improvisational comedy), Naveen (sketch comedy), Kanan (comedy of terror), and Kenny (alternative comedy). The contestants perform a set in each genre and are scored by the remaining six judges. The best part? There is no elimination till all of them have performed sets in every genre and their cumulative score over the seven episodes will determine, who will be going into the finale. Scoring is done by both the judges and the audience and the average score will be taken as the final score for that episode.
This kind of format gives a chance to the contestants to learn about the different genres there are in stand-up and that too from the experts!
The Hosts.
The hosts Abhish Matthew and Sumukhi Suresh are doing a good job too. Their rapport on the stage and their jokes once in a while, keeps the audience hooked on to the show. The views of all the judges too are in tandem, which is a refreshing change from some of the reality shows, where it is more of drama than actual content.
The positives, though, end there.
The main mission of the show is to find the best stand-up comedian, who is worthy of being the next big thing. Except for a few of them who are worthy of being in the Top 10 and are genuinely funny, the performance of the others is so bad that you just feel like putting it on fast-forward mode; the jokes fall flat and it is sometimes difficult to comprehend what the joke was. Added to that, the judges’ comments are hardly two sentences long and it can’t really be called a constructive criticism.
Things seem to be looking up though.
The recent episode, where Kaneez mentored the contestants in improvisation, was worth the watch. All the contestants seem to have improved by leaps and bounds and that is a positive, going forward.
We can’t wait for the next episode, where Naveen will be mentoring them in the genre of Sketch Comedy. Fingers crossed!
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