From The 50 and Alliance to Rise & Fall, the production house has been exploring newer ways of engaging audiences while retaining the core ingredients that make reality television work. Reality television in India has long been associated with drama, conflict and larger-than-life personalities. But Banijay Asia is increasingly experimenting with formats that put gameplay, strategy and scale at the heart of the viewing experience.
Relevant background
You have never seen contestants working in teams in a reality show; it was the first time we introduced that. As Group Chief Development Officer (CDO) at Banijay Asia, Mrinalini Jain has been closely involved in developing some of these formats. In an exclusive conversation with Hindustan Times, she opened up about the thinking behind Alliance, choosing Kunal Kemmu over a conventional reality-show host, the ambition to create an Indian reality IP that can travel globally, and why the company believes quality must come before volume. She explained that Banijay remains confident about the IPs it brings to the market, while recognising that every show has its own fate. She explains that the creative approach behind Alliance was deliberately different. “In a daily beast, the language almost evolves. So when we brought Alliance, the way we imagined it, you had never seen vertically integrated sets; we did that for the first time. The set was very different. For Mrinalini, the show was never intended to be a captive reality show that depended solely on interpersonal drama. “It was also a show which had the right balance of gameplay, strategy and drama. It was not just a captive show where people were only thriving on drama. We were very clear that we wanted gameplay to be at the centre. “I don’t think the audience wakes up saying we need a scripted or unscripted show. They wake up wanting to be engaged,” she adds. She feels Kunal’s personality made him a natural fit. “Kunal is so secure as an artist that he was like, I don’t want to play a character which is not me. This is who he is; he’s a very fair person who is known to choose roles which other people may not. He has a freshness and a relatability with the audience that we love. So we were very keen that he hosts the show, and he was also gracious enough to accept it very quickly. But we were really trying to do something different. Everybody was like, ‘Oh wow, this is so different’ when they saw Kunal, and that was the motive,” she adds. Alliance also made headlines when Sohail Khan joined the show as a contestant. “We are very bullish and very ambitious. We aim for the highest stakes and try our best to make that happen. Sohail bhai loved the Alliance format so much and loved the game so much that he agreed to come on the show.
Talking about Alliance, Mrinalini said there was no internal scepticism about whether a strategy-driven reality show would work among audiences accustomed to high-drama formats such as Lock Upp and Bigg Boss . The key is to remain committed to the format and language of a show before launching it, according to her. Mrinalini says the actor’s decision came from his own enthusiasm for the format. I think it’s the strength of the IPs and also our persistence,” she says.
