Baal Veer
Production House: Optimystix
SAB TV, Monday to Friday, 8pm
Genre: Fantasy

The creatives have beautifully blended reality and fantasy in SAB TV's Baal Veer. The plot synopsis is as follows: A bedtime fairy tale told to a child comes true because as mentioned in the story a Fairy Land ruled by Rani Pari does exist. Rani Pari hears the endearing plea of a little girl to help her and duly sends Baal Veer, (a little boy who was adopted by fairies when he was a baby) to help the world.

The USP of this serial is that Fairy Land has been etched out in magnanimous beauty. The special effects used to create a heavenly Fairy Land are unique. 

The costume design and makeup of the fairies are also striking. This show surely deserves to win awards for the best costumes and makeup. Though all the winged fairies are clad in royal attire, each and every fairy has a distinctly unique look.

The cinematography and special effects of this show also stand apart. A lot of effort has gone into creating the scenes in which the fairies are flying. The scenes zooming to and fro from Earth to the heavenly Fairy Land are eye catching. Ditto for the scenes in which the fairies create magic by waving their wands.

 What is quite innovative about this show is that the fairies aren't perfect. For instance Dari Dari Pari gets nervous easily and Bhari Bhari Pari's eyes well up with tears. Then there's the Bhayankar Pari who is just a fairy on the exterior but evil from within.

I also liked the fact that the heavenly child Baal Veer isn't being given the leeway by the fairies who mentor him while he executes his earthly duties. Indeed he has to live the hard life of a child who works in a tea shop so that he can empathize better with them and accordingly help them out. Baal Veer is shown to be more than happy to do the washing, cleaning and delivering tea in exchange of two square meals a day. Fairies won't clean the utensils he is supposed to clean manually by the whiff of the magic wand. This little boy is mature enough to understand that he needs to work hard to save the world. He doesn't grumble about this at all.

Common problems which both privileged and under-privileged Indian children face are being dealt quite well in the show. Till now they have raised issues like child labour, bullying in schools, TV addiction in kids and childhood gluttony.

The musical track which accompanies the scenes of Baal Veer's super human feats has a grandiose touch somewhat similar to the super hero movies' dramatic score. Baal Veer is after all India's child super hero on TV.

The drawback of the show is that the humour isn't really rib-tickling and surely doesn't make you fall off the chair. If the humour is better, the show will attract more viewers.

As we won't be getting TRP till December 19th, we can't measure the success of the show on the basis of its opening TRP. However we can say that both adults and kids can enjoy this sweet fantasy show.

Verdict: Three out of five stars

-       Author and Reporter: Pallavi Bhattacharya