The return of 1990s Indian crime drama sparks nostalgia

“Mercy, break the door.” (Mercy, break down the door)

Most Indians will instantly recognize this dialogue from the popular detective show CID, which ran from 1998 to 2018, making it one of India’s longest-running television shows.

The whodunit saw three fearless policemen – ACP Pradyuman, Inspector Daya and Inspector Abhijeet – solving cases one after another, as no criminal was ever their equal. The low-budget episode had a comically simple plot, impressive acting, and a nice slap from ACP Pradyuman to get a suspect to confess.

But over the years, the show has achieved cult status, and its characters and dialogue have spawned plenty of jokes, memes, and reels.

CID is set to return later this month, garnering mixed reactions among its fans. Some are eager to see the three policemen back in action, but others say the show’s old-world charm may not fit with the gritty realism of modern-day crime shows.

Over the past few days, the makers of the show have been releasing teasers for the upcoming episodes on Instagram, with each receiving hundreds of thousands of likes and comments.

Apart from the three main characters, the teaser features familiar tropes and dialogues. These include Inspector Daya kicking down doors to find out the whereabouts of a suspect and ACP Pradyuman muttering his iconic line, ‘Kuch toh gad hai, Daya’ (Something is not right, Daya), to the delight of both his team and the audience. Involves indicating that a crime has been committed. ,

Trisha Shah, 35, a Mumbai-based content creator and fan of the show, says the teasers make her nostalgic.

“CID was one of the few crime shows on television at the time and my parents had no objection to watching it because of its family content,” says Ms Shah.

“Despite being a crime show, it never featured gruesome violence, sexual crimes, foul language or anything that was not suitable for family viewing.”

in one Interview One of the show’s writers from Film Companion, an entertainment journalism platform, said that they also avoided giving the characters surnames to avoid hurting anyone’s sentiments.

But the show’s quirky storylines far exceed its prime, be it ACP Pradyuman coming back from the dead or Inspector Daya single-handedly taking a poison-gas-laden plane to safety.

in one Interview In Forbes magazine, the show’s creator BP Singh described these scenes and storylines as “believable nonsense”.

He told the magazine, “You can laugh at it (the scene) later. But in those five minutes, it’s so entertaining that you don’t mind it.”

In a rather humorous fashion, the characters also explain the stories and techniques used to solve crimes through their dialogues, making it easy even for children to understand what is going on.

“The bad guys were always caught and that was heartening to see,” Ms Shah says. “I don’t think I’d be able to enjoy the show today, but it was a big deal at the time.”

In the 1990s, TV was a big deal because it was the only form of home entertainment. At the beginning of the decade, India relaxed broadcasting rights, making more channels available.

“Initially, channels like Star started reruns of American shows like Baywatch and The Bold and the Beautiful. But new entrants like Zee TV and Sony have started producing original shows for Indian audiences,” says Harsh Taneja, associate professor of media. Started.” at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He says producers often adapt Western shows for Indian audiences by importing biblical formats – guidelines outlining story structure – and modifying them for the local context. Therefore, shows like CID often featured storylines that were very similar to the American crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

As people’s spending power increased in the 1990s and 2000s, television became a staple in homes. Many homes had not just one but two televisions, Mr Taneja says, allowing producers to create content targeting different age groups.

Interestingly, when CID was released in the 1990s, its target audience was children aged six to 14. After CID, many other crime-centric shows started coming on channels – from Crime Patrol to Savdhaan India. But one can say that it was CID that created the appetite for crime shows among the audience.

Priya Ravi, 40, remembers eagerly waiting for each episode of CID to air when she was a child. She confesses that it was the show that inspired her to convince her parents to get a television set at their home.

“The episodes aired twice a week, and initially I would go to a friend’s house to watch them. But then I convinced my parents to get a TV so I could watch the episodes at home. The day was very happy, TV arrived,” says Ms. Ravi.

She says that although she will not watch the new episodes of CID, she will definitely encourage her two children, aged seven and nine, to watch them.

She says, “If the show remains as clean as it has been, I think it’s a great way to introduce kids to some of the realities of life and make them alert about their safety and their surroundings.”

“I look forward to the return of the heroic trio.”

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