Opening episode of The Kapil Sharma Show was a crashing bore!

What a climbdown! We all held our collective breath for the return of  Kapil Sharma. But the return was a bit of a damper. Okay, let’s not beat around the bush. Without blunting the impact let’s just say the opening episode of The Kapil Sharma Show was a crashing bore.

Firstly it was a big mistake to have a live show as the inaugural episode.Any artiste with  even a semblance of awareness of how stand-up comedy works,would know that there is no control over the material that goes in a live show. The jokes can run any way. And when the writing is poor to begin with, as it was on the night that

Kapil returned to us, there is little the performers can do except to pretend to have fun.

The humour was scattered and scant that the joke was really on Kapil and his team

Is this what we had been led to expect? All the talk of coming back with a bang ended in a weepy whimper. Inviting Shah Rukh Khan as promotional gambit for his latest film was a bit like Hema Malini recommending Razia Sultan a week after its release.There were women in the audience screaming for Shah Rukh. But now thatFan has come and gone it was a little ill-timed and ironical.

The problem, though, was not with Shah Rukh. With his inbuilt sense of humour and self-deprecatory sarcasm he can zip across a car wreck . Which is what the inaugural episode of The Kapil Sharma Show Was. TheComedy Nights team seem to have run out of steam. There was nothing new in the new season’s first episode.Asgar Ali transformed from a Daadi to a Naani. Gutthi became another act in drag. But they were still doing the same things  as  earlier, including mock-seduction  of all the guests.

On Saturday the  centre of Asgar’s unwanted attention was IPL top brass Anurag Thakur . Ali Asgar slithered up to Anurag and promised to hide him in a place where no one could find him.

How about in the home of the writers who wrote these awful gags, too dull to be risqué and too demure to be naughty?

The worst offender was Kapil himself, Looking out of sorts and completely out of rhythm he spent the first half hour berating guests who walked in late.This fastidiousness suitsa Kishori Amonkar concert, not a stand-up comedy show.

All I can say is, those who came in late were the ones who got away. Imagine the plight of those guests who had to sit through this renegade’s rigmarole.Surely if Kapil and his team have deserted the  show that got them recognition, they need to go far beyond the expected. This new season was just the same old stuff recycled.