I met with Kelly da Cunha, ANTV’s general manager of production, in a boxy backstage room a few hours before filming for the Panah elimination round was to begin.
At its peak, the show reached 7.6 per cent of Indonesia’s television viewership the World Cup final reached only 6.2 per cent.
ANTV soon discovered that the ratings for the mythological series were higher than those for the football. As I waited for well- built men to take to the football field, I ended up watching well-built men in faux-gold jewellery fighting with magical weapons instead. Mahabharat was aired just prior to each day’s opening matches. I first came across this Bahasa Indonesia Mahabharat in June, when I began to tune into ANTV every evening for its exclusive regional broadcasts of the FIFA World Cup. The Indonesian channel ANTV bought the rights to Mahabharat from Star Plus, and started airing a dubbed version of the show this March. The winner, who will be announced at the end of December, will travel with Sheikh to India. Every Saturday, the women line up on a stage, dubbed the “ bharata yudha” zone, and Sheikh sends one of them home. But in this case the hero happens to be someone who speaks no Indonesian, and had only been in the country for about a month when the show started: the Indian actor Shaheer Sheikh, who played Arjuna in the 2013 television series Mahabharat, an extravagant adaptation of the mythological epic by Star Plus.
This was the set for the live broadcast of Panah Asmara Arjuna’s second weekly elimination round.Īdvertised as a “ maha reality show”, the Indonesian series follows a familiar trope: 15 young women start out sharing a house, and compete in daily challenges as they vie for the attention of a desirable hero. Strobe lights criss-crossed the auditorium, and an overwrought score thundered from the sound system. Inside, a stage featuring two giant gilt thrones was being readied. A brawny, black-maned figure wielding a bow and arrow pouted suggestively from a phalanx of promotional banners that lined the street, with the title Panah Asmara Arjuna - Arjuna’s Arrow of Love - printed above. She got the least time to prepare for the role but I could see her talent.On a Saturday afternoon in late September, gaggles of hijab-clad women, many with young children in tow, swarmed outside the closed gates of an auditorium in Taman Mini, a popular recreational park in east Jakarta.
Pooja was the last one to enter the cast and was the right choice for Draupadi, he shared.ĭuring an interaction with SpotboyE, Siddharth said, "After taking 1000 other auditions, I saw Pooja and she was bang on who could set the screen on fire because that was the actual demand of the character. I really admire Pooja's work and have respect for her commitment level.
He said that it was very difficult to cast for the role as the character demanded a fierce personality. Siddharth revealed that for the role of Draupadi, 1000 women were called for the audition. It is all due to the impeccable casting in the show, done by producer Siddharth Kumar Tewary. The mythological show, which was created in 2013, is once again basking in high TRPs. It has the stellar cast of Shaheer Sheikh who played the role of Arjun, Saurabh Raaj Jain who played Krishna and Pooja Sharma who played Draupadi. The magnum opus drama Mahabharat on Star Plus is being rerun on television.