No more catty chats

Tele review

In the conspicuous void left in the celebrity chat show template, thanks to Simi Garewal’s signature show taking a bow ages ago and Karan Johar’s Koffee With Karan also taking a break from spilling the beans on B-town gossip, there enters Season 2 of Look Who’s Talking With Niranjan on Zee Café.

A show that perhaps attracted some eyeballs more by default, riding on the absence of chat show biggies, Look Who’s Talking is hosted by Niranjan Iyengar, scriptwriter and lyricist whose another claim to fame before this show happened was that he authored a book — The Making of Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham.

Look Who’s Talking has tried to carve its own niche, by consciously not sporting KJo-style “cattiness” in unveiling the dark secrets of tinsel town and by not matching up to the class and cast of Rendezvous with Simi Garewal. But even as host Niranjan does the tightrope between bonhomie and banter punctuated by serious talk, the show is yet to dish out a signature style. It’s not as if this chat show doesn’t take a go at being hatke (different) or tossing up a signature segment, by hosting the show in a real restaurant or by tossing up selfie moments, or by having an OLX auction segment wherein star memorabilia goes up for grabs online for fans.

Over to Season 2’s celebrity cast. While Season 1’s inaugural episode had made a mark by upping the celebrity quotient, with chat show czar Karan Johar, Season 2 did not open with a bang. Its inaugural episode didn’t have a veteran in KJo’s league and had instead GenY actor Varun Dhawan.

Niranjan’s style is neither that of a catty-cum-chatty host, nor that of a regal confidante. It is understated and conversational, more often than not like a monotone.

So, in the name of spilling the beans, we have Varun Dhawan telling Niranjan that his dad David Dhawan had categorically told him that he won’t launch him in B-town; that in reality he competes more with Student of the Year co-star Alia Bhat than with Sidharth Malhotra and all that.

In the next episode, we had Anushka Sharma coming out about her relationship with cricketer Virat Kohli, to the extent of even playing advocate for her boyfriend. In the context of Anushka having drawn flak for Virat’s bad show at the World Cup semi-finals, the actress quickly rose to Virat’s defence.

The third episode saw Sonakshi Sinha getting candid about her link-up with Arjun Kapoor saying they’re “just neighbours”, about her battle with the calories that saw her shedding 30 kilos for her debut role, etc.

Now, could we call all this candidness as spicing up the juiciness quotient of this template? Nah! It’s a far cry from the saucy sound bytes dripping on KJo’s sets. At best, Look Who’s Talking is like another platter of plain salted chips.