Zee TV’s late weekend nights’ offering Amma is a marked move away from reality shows, celebrity specials and other fluffy entertainment which are weekend staple fare of channels.  Filmmakers have recreated real stories from the underworld into blockbuster films e.g.  Company, Once Upon a Time in Mumbai,  etc. On television, the underworld has largely been restricted to crime shows.  But Zee TV has taken the initiative to fill the lacuna with Amma.  

The first lady of crime, Jenabai Daaruwali was a dominating   personality, who staked  her place in the underworld by capitalizing on the rationing of rice and selling it at a price.   Amma explores the journey of the indomitable female don from the time her husband deserts her. She survives through nefarious activities and meets Haji Mastan , Dawood Ibrahim, etc.  

Film actor Urvashi Sharma made her TV debut as Amma, and put in a convincing performance. But when the series made a generation leap, the actor wasn’t  able to pass muster as the aging lady don, and had to be replaced.  The makers approached Shabana Azmi. Azmi’s tour de force performance was as Rambhi in Godmother. The film was ostensibly inspired by the life of Santokben Jadeja, who ran the Mafia operations of Porbandar, Gujarat in the late 1980s and early 1990s and later turned politician.  

As an actor, Shabana Azmi  she has largely worked in films, but has done theatre too, and maybe television was her last frontier to cross. She  was part of the first season of 24. As Jenabai Daaruwali,  she will steer Amma to the finale episode.  

In India, there’s a mind set about film actors working in television. In early 2000, Karishma Kapoor played the lead role in the serial Karishma – The Miracles of Destiny, her detractors wrote off her film career. Likewise, when Amrita Rao signed up for Meri Awaaz Hi Pehchaan Hai.  Albeit no one said a word, when  in 1988, the late Nutan was the first film actor to step into the small screen.  She played the pivotal Kaliganj ki Bahu in Mujrim Hazir, which was based on Bimal Mitra's classic novel Asami Hazir.

In the US, it isn’t uncommon for marquee names to take up  television, so long as the roles excite them.  Glen Close and William Hurt shared credits in Damages, a successful American legal thriller series. Claire Danes is in the lead role in Homeland, a political thriller on US television. Closer to home, Priyanka Chopra is Alex Parrish  in the American thriller Quantico.  

However  today, a new page has been opened in the history of television in India.  Women actors  are averse to playing roles of older women, so  when a prime time soap makes a generation leap, as they are frequently  needed to for the sake of TRPs. Some actors  stay on, with streaks of white hair and made up wrinkles, and  act out granny roles; others  opt out, so  the producers resort to hanging  garlanded photographs!  For Meri Awaaz Hi Pehchaan Hai, Pallavi Joshi allowed prosthetics to take over her aging process and she matched it with her performance. But aging convincingly onscreen and matching it with in-depth performance is beyond the grasp of Primetime’s muster of actors.

Amma is the first serial to date where a character is played by two actors to denote  the transition of the narrative. Filmmaker Shyam Benegal used Smriti Mishra and Kirron Kher to play Sardari Begum at different ages.   

Could  Amma be  the beginning of Shabana Azmi’s tryst with television?