Diya Aur Baati Hum and Madhubala Ek Ishq Ek Junoon bag the Best Fiction Award at the Apsara Producer

Television’s renowned shows Diya Aur Baati Hum on Star Plus, and Madhubala Ek Ishq Ek Junoon on Colors walked away with the cake at the recently held Apsara Producers’ Guild Awards. The awards event that commemorates extraordinary achievements in both cinema and television was held at the Yash Raj Studios on 16 February 2013.

Shashi-Sumeet Mittal Pvt. Ltd’s Diya Aur Baati Hum and Nautanki Telefilms and BAG Films’ joint venture Madhubala Ek Ishq Ek Junoon shared the honours and bagged the award for the Best Fiction Show on TV.

As we begin to write about both the award-winning shows, the first thing that strikes our mind is that while Diya Aur Baati Hum has had an easy sailing at the ratings chart from the time it launched, it has not been a fairy-tale journey so far for Madhubala. Madhubala, touted to be the love story of two strikingly different personalities in RK (Vivian Dsena) and Madhu (Drashti Dhami) began well, but saw a decline in numbers after a period of time. In fact, there was a time when the so-called critics of the industry predicted ‘an early closure’ for Madhubala owing to the tracks not working. And now, to see the same show faring very well (with the ratings seeing an upswing and also being critically acclaimed), is an achievement in itself!!

We contacted the Producers of both the shows to congratulate them and ask them about their journey.

When contacted, Producer of Diya Aur Baati Hum Sumeet Mittal said, “Awards are always important and motivating for everyone. I take it as a drive to keep on performing over and above the expectations.”

Producer of Madhubala Ek Ishq Ek Junoon, Saurabh Tewari of Nautanki Telefilms expressed his excitement by saying, “It is a very good feeling to get this award, especially when Madhubala was written off by industry people when it had a decline in numbers. No show is going to yield results within the first 4-5 weeks. And with many new channels coming up, viewers do sample the new program and go back to what they want to see. They need strong reasons to come back to a particular show, and that is what we did exactly in Madhubala. All credit to the Colors programming team, Raj Nayak, CEO of Colors who had the conviction in the show. He gave me the time that I wanted to get the viewers back. We saw a different kind of love story between RK and Madhu in the last month or so, and now we enter a new phase in the story line where the love story takes to a new level.”

Congratulations to the entire team of Diya Aur Baati Hum and Madhubala Ek Ishq Ek Junoon for this achievement.