Has Star Plus’s Aarambh gamble failed ?

Has Star Plus’s gamble to slot its big ticket mythology show Aramabh in the weekend time slot, which has been its achilles heel, back fired? It certainly seems so after looking at the first week numbers, which are hardly anything to write home about. Star was hoping that its new show written by Bahubali writer K. V. Vijayendra Prasad and produced by Shristi Arya, would open as big as Naagin1 did for Colors last year. Sadly it is raking in just as much ratings as their other recent weekend fiction properties did, most of which did not even complete their stipulated limited edition runs. Considering Star had pulled all stops to make the show look grand, the financial implications will also be steeper.

Though all is not lost yet, for the lead girl Karthika Nair is getting lots of critical acclaim and the show’s high quality CG is also being noticed. Rajniesh Duggal is also doing a fab job as the under confident Varun Dev, who will soon come into his own. We sure hope that numbers rise quickly, for the story itself is no longer than 64 episodes so there is not much leeway to recover lost ground. Also given the genre, there is not much scope for hyping the drama as is the case with most daily soaps, maybe they can hasten the pace though.