The level of immersion for the audience is much higher in TV: Gul Khan

Earlier this month, Colors launched its romantic drama, ‘Namak Issk Ka’, which narrates the story of a glamorous Nachaniya ChamCham, who earns her living by dancing at events and wedding. In a most endearing way, it showcases how under unforeseen circumstances she gets married to an affluent man and her struggles to find her footing in her new family, fight off the labels that people have given her owing to her profession and find love.

The show has been produced by Gul Khan and co-produced by Dipti Kalwani. Khan has produced, written and directed quite a few popular shows, including ‘Geet’, ‘Qubool Hai’, ‘Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon?’, ‘Ishqbaaaz’, ‘Kullfi Kumarr Bajewala’, ‘Nazar’ and ‘Yehh Jadu Hai Jinn Ka’. It is learnt that she is now readying to come up with her next show, reportedly a fantasy comedy show.

Speaking about the conceptualisation of the show, Gul Khan told Adgully, “I really like the music of that belt, especially Bhojpuri songs, and I feel when we generally make shows from this side, we usually don’t use such kind of songs as they don’t fit in this universe generally, so I really wanted to explore this. And while exploring this, I thought we should pick up something unique in that belt, as we have seen many times these dancers they perform and now-a-days they put a lot of YouTube videos as well, and this is a very popular phenomenon. So, we wanted to pick up such stories on dancers’ journey, and hence we took this concept with the background of Bihar and put it in ‘Namak Issk Ka’.”

Casting of every show is a very important and crucial part, and for ‘Namak Issk Ka’, Khan opted for popular Bhojpuri actor Aditya Ojha as the lead protagonist. She explained, “Since the show is based in Bihar, the Bhojpuri industry already being developed so well, the casting that we did was mostly from Bihar. As they can catch the accent and style well and their acting doesn’t seem fake.”

Highlighting her partnership with Colors for the first time, Khan said, “We are happy to be associated with Colors. It’s my first show with them, and they are amazing people and a channel that has always presented unique and entertaining concepts and I look forward to a great partnership.”

With the serials now also available online on OTT Platforms, Khan remarked that she loves doing TV as it happens immediately and the ratings are quick, with the constant fan following. At the same time she maintained that she it did not affect her as a producer now that the show which is made for TV is also shown on OTT. She further said, “However, it will definitely have an effect when the shows will only be for OTT. I have done ‘Tanhaiyan’ for Hotstar, and it’s a different kind of joy to do OTT shows. But I somehow feel that the level of immersion for the audience is much higher in TV, maybe because it’s a longer running show. And the kind of craziness that I have seen for TV serials’ characters, I am yet to see the same for an OTT actor.”

When asked what is keeping her busy these days, Khan said, “I am working on different shows right now, but the one which will be up soon is a romantic show on Sony.”