The voyeuristic reality television show
Big Brother,
is to be launched in India, the show's producer said on Monday. Controversies, however, are more likely to swirl around the contestants' dress sense than sexual antics.
Producers want the show to stoke debate in a country where young unmarried men and women living together is far from widely accepted and pre-marital romance is often frowned upon.
"Controversy is an essential ingredient of Big Brother," said Rajesh Kamat, managing director of the seven-month-old Indian wing of Holland's Endemol, the show's producer.
"But it's going to be a family show and we want controversy on the right topics," he added.
The Big Brother format, which sees around a dozen strangers locked up in a house and gradually voted off by the audience, has been used in television shows in around 70 countries.
Versions of the show in some countries revolve around sex, but Kamat said this need not hold for India. He gave the dress sense of the female contestants as a possible talking point between sari-wrapped mothers and their jeans-wearing daughters.
In India's cities many mainly middle class young men and women live private lives with a similar freedom to the West but small towns and villages are much more conservative.
{{/usCountry}}In India's cities many mainly middle class young men and women live private lives with a similar freedom to the West but small towns and villages are much more conservative.
{{/usCountry}}But Kamat also said he hoped to see sexual chemistry between contestants to "push the envelope" and test the limits of India's relatively prim broadcast industry.
Anupama Mandloi, head of programming at Sony Entertainment Television, suggested that Indian contestants might be a little better behaved than participants elsewhere in the world when the channel starts broadcasting the show later this year.
"I think they would bring their own cultural sensibility to the show," she said.
For one thing, she thinks there will be little objection from the male and female contestants at being asked to sleep in separate bedrooms after lights out.
So-called "reality" television programmes have been a huge hit in India, most of them in the family-friendly talent show mould in which anonymous hopefuls compete to prove they are India's best singer or funniest comedian.
The Great Indian Laughter Challenge, also produced by Endemol, was at one point watched by 8 per cent of the estimated 62 million households with cable TV in India, Endemol's Kamat said.
He expects Big Brother to reach "much greater heights".