Star Plus’ Saraswatichandra under scanner; might go off-air

Star Plus’ Saraswatichandra is one show that always manages to stay in news…doesn’t matter if it has a convincing storyline or not.

This ambitious television venture of Sanjay Leela Bhansali was launched with much aplomb and viewers and TV pundits believed that it will revolutionize or add a dimension to the realms of Indian television.
However, the show never managed to put the TRP chart on fire (1.6 this week) or create waves with its differentiating content.

Now, reports that are coming in suggest that the channel is pondering on pulling the plug off the project.

Said a source: “The show is no doubt very high profile but TRPs do matter. Saraswatichandra’s numbers have majorly been on the lower side. Hence the concern.”

Furthermore, TRPs are not the only probable reason which could bring an end to the show. Here’s more from the source, “Jennifer’s (Winget playing Kumud) repeated denial on not enacting romantic scenes with Gautam (Rode playing Saras) is taking a toll on the storyline. We all know that Jennifer’s husband Karan (Singh Grover) is not comfortable with her romancing other co actors. This has also put the creatives in a fix.”

To get Jennifer’s side of the story, we sent her a text message but did not get any response.
Furthermore, reports suggested that soon a parallel lead will be introduced in the plot. Rahil Azam’s name was tossed up for the same.

However, now we have learnt that Sanjay Leela Bhansali has gone on to reject Rahil’s name and has asked creatives to look out for more faces.

Gaurav Chopraa (Colors’ Uttaran) was also in contention to play the role of the parallel lead. But for now, it looks like he is also out of the list.

For confirmation we called up Rahil, but he remained unavailable.

Gaurav stated, “I am committed to Uttaran and the creatives are trying to work out on my future tracks. So I would not like to comment on anything else at this moment.”

Indeed, lots happening at the Saraswatichandra front.

Now, on a different note…Star Plus was all set to introduce a new band of afternoon shows. But our channel sources have suggested that the move has been dropped as of now.

“Meri Bhabhi was supposed to be a part of the afternoon slot. But later it got a prime time slot. Avinash Sachdev starrer tentatively titled Aastha, which was supposed to get a noon slot, will most probably air at prime time or late evening. So it looks like the channel has dropped the afternoon band idea as of now.”

We buzzed a channel PR to get a confirmation on the same but all we got is “no comments”.

With TRP battle heating up with each passing week, shows will have to really battle hard to stay on air.