MUMBAI: With an overkill of reality shows during weekends on most television channels, Star Plus is taking the road less travelled. The popular GEC will air its existing fiction shows from Monday to Saturday and if sources are to be believed, starting end June or beginning July, it will launch three finite fiction shows to be telecast exclusively on Sundays every week.

The trio is expected to fill up vacant slots left after Mad in India was pulled off air after it failed to live up to audience and channel’s expectations.

“Star Plus is known to create content which is different from other offerings. At a time when other channels are focusing on non-fiction properties, we at Star have decided to take a completely different route with finite fiction shows,” a source told this website.

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It is learnt that of the three new shows, the first, produced by Miditech India, revolves round the aviation industry and is tentatively titled Airlines.

Host of The Great Indian Love Challenge on NDTV Good Times, VJ Yudhishtir aka Yudi, will play the male lead while Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai fame Tulip Joshi, who made her Bollywood debut as Sanjana will be cast as the female lead. Shooting is already said to have started in the capital.

A la Anil Kapoor’s Hindi version of American series 24 on Colors, Star Plus’ second show will be the desi adaptation of Shonda Rhimes’ hit series Grey’s Anatomy starring Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh and Patrick Dempsey. Tentatively titled Hospital, the series will be produced by Endemol.

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The third is Ashutosh Gowariker’s much-hyped show Everest which tells the story of a young girl who wants to prove her mettle to her father by living his dream of scaling the Mount Everest. The shoot took place not so long ago at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM). Everest stars Rohan Gandotra who is seen in the new Dermicool ad and Shamata Anchan who appears in the Garnier commercial. The 25 to 30 episode show will have a finite beginning and a finite end, according to the same source.

In addition to these three shows, rapper-actor Yo Yo Honey Singh of Blue hai paani paani fame will make his small screen debut with a music reality show called India’s Raw Star which aims at tapping raw talent from all corners of India.

Singh will be seen as judge cum mentor on the show. The promos are already out on the digital platform and feature Singh egging on young singers to think out of the box to get an entry into the show.

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At the time of penning this article, the video uploaded on YouTube had already got more than 55,000 views. The auditions too will be only through digital where contestants will have to shoot their music videos and upload the same on the show’s official website. India’s Raw Star is likely to go on air by end July and will mostly be telecast on Saturday and Sunday.

Participants can log on to www.starplus.in/indiasrawstar via web or mobile. Alternatively, one can           download the India’s Raw Star mobile app and submit his/her audition video along with the requested details.

A media planner expressed the view that having finite shows over the weekend is advantageous. “I think this different approach will do well for the channel. Understanding the nature of the audience and their requirement, I think it’s the right step taken by the channel, where others are ruling in the dancing and comedy space. But only worry is the content. It should have a strong reason for making people switch to another channel when they are used to watching dancing and comedy,” he said.

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