‘Vogue BFFs’ – potential under-explored

Bollywood, Fashion, Friendship – these three form the crux of Colors Infinity’s latest talk show, ‘Vogue BFFs’. The show, which premiered on Saturday, September 24, 2016 at 9 pm, is a weekly date with the most dapper celebrities along with their favourite people from the industry, with whom they share a special bond of camaraderie. Giving viewers an exclusive peek into the glamorous, sassy, chic and charismatic lives of these stars through an hour-long conversation with their BFFs-cum-confidant who have been an aide, an advisor and at times a guiding light not only in their professional careers, but also in their personal lives. Besides, the show has the glamourous Kamal Sidhu as the host.

What’s not to like?

The inaugural episode

Episode 1 featured Deepika Padukone and her stylist best friend Anaita Shroff Adajania, who is also the Fashion Director of Vogue. Padukone has been in the news not just for her forthcoming Hollywood release ‘XXX’, but also her rumoured relationship with Ranveer Singh and more importantly, for bringing to the fore the not-so-often-discussed issue of depression. Hence, there were a lot of expectations from the first episode.

Did it meet the expectations? We will come to that in a bit.

First the good things – the set, which was stated to be host Kamal Sidhu’s abode, was tastefully done up. The camaraderie between Padukone and Adajania was joie de vivre and fun to watch. Sidhu played the perfect host and displayed sparkling wit and pizzazz. The guessing game was interesting.

Being a Bollywood celebrity talk show, comparisons with ‘Koffee with Karan’ are inevitable. Karan Johar has the added advantage of being a part of the Bollywood industry, he has directed several of his guests in his films and he knows them on a personal basis. On the other hand, Sidhu has been part of the glamour and modelling world.

For people of a certain generation, there is a great nostalgia factor regarding ‘Phool Khile Hain Gulshan Gulshan’. Hosted by the charming and bubbly yesteryears actress Tabassum, the long-running show was aired on Doordarshan between 1972 and 1993, and featured the who’s who and legends of Bollywood as well as the television industry. This nostalgia has now been recreated for the digital era in the form of webisodes – ‘Tabassum Talkies’ – on YouTube.

Coming back to ‘Vogue BFFs’, some reviewers have been harsh on the show – calling it ‘boring beauties’ and ‘cure for insomnia’.

We at Adgully feel there is a lot of potential for the show to present interesting and hitherto unknown insights into the lives of the Bollywood stars, who are anyways over-exposed on social media. The show needs to move away from their comfort zones and challenge them, goad them, dare them a bit more. No, Sidhu, we are not asking you to be a la Arnab Goswami, but get that X-factor in here – or XXX-factor even!

After all, the celebrity line-up for the show and the pairings are interesting enough – Anil Kapoor - Arjun Kapoor, Kajol - Mickey Contractor, Kareena Kapoor - Manish Malhotra, and many more to come.

‘Vogue BFFs’ is presented by Ciaz, while Yu Mobile is the Powered By sponsor and Myntra is the style partner.