Can’t screen out the old and young: No cheeky children and cuddly grannies allowed on TV sets

It cannot be said that Indian television serials have ever been ageist, with both silvery haired characters and precocious pre-schoolers portraying the gamut of pivotal roles. But the new post-lockdown rules for shooting to restart will depict a very unfamiliar India — at least till the next change in guidelines — with no forbidding patriarchs or cuddly grannies allowed on set, and no cheeky children either.

It would be unfair to not allow senior citizen actors a chance to earn after weeks of lean pickings; and with schools still closed, child actors have even more spare time after their online lessons. Besides, given that Indian serials are mostly multi-generational social dramas or epics, the disappearance of elders and children will seem odd indeed.

Decadal leaps backward or forward in time are apparently being contemplated in serials that have oldies or youngsters in key roles, but the obvious solution is what Amitabh Bachchan has done for videos shot during the lockdown months. Some crews are already recording old and young characters separately in their homes and splicing those into the rest of the footage so that Indian audiences will not be deprived of their favourite memes. Of course, the ‘no under-10s and over-65s allowed on set’ rules may need further clarification as screen ages are often at variance with actual ages.