Malayalee House

Concept

Malayalee House is a reality show based on the original Dutch Big Brother format developed by John de Mol. A number of contestants (known as "residents") live in a purpose-built house and are isolated from the rest of the world. Each week, residents nominate one among them for eviction, and the resident who receives the most nominations has to leave the house. The residents in Malayalee House are famous personalities in their respective fields. All the rooms in Malayalee House are locked in the beginning of the show. A room will be opened when a contestant gets evicted. The room to be opened after an eviction will be decided by the contestants through voting.

The house

The Malayalee House is built exclusively for the show at a film studio in Hyderabad owned by actor Nagarjuna. The house is traditional, well-furnished and equipped, but all the rooms remain closed in the beginning of the show. The open area at the center of the house (Nadumuttam) is the center place for all Malayalee house activities. There is a kitchen, prayer room, and several bedrooms in the house. The house has no TV connection, no phones, and no Internet connection or clocks. Residents are overseen by 30 close circuit cameras 24x7. The house is installed with LCD displays/speakers through which instructions are given to the contestants. The cameras are hidden behind mirrors. The contestants have named all the cameras and the main camera is called "Kanthaari".

Rules

The show consists of 16 'residents' who live together with the main intention of creating a show out of the space and time provided to them. The lack of hard and fast rules facilitate an atmosphere of anarchy to make the show interesting to watch. The residents must evict the most unlikeable participant, from the option given to them by the Anchor, based on the rules set by the Anchor (these are done by moderators inter-alia considering the ratings and the response from viewers). Each contestant is compelled to pull others legs to survive. The rules for the contestants have never been told to the audience because of strict confidentiality. However, there are basic rules, such as they are not supposed to tamper with any of the electronic equipment or any other thing in the fouse, or violate the law of the land. They cannot leave the premises unless they are evicted or due to special reasons (e.g. medical). Some of the contestants may be 'planted' or 'guests'. The audience is made to keep guessing as to who is acting, fake, or original, to make the show interesting.

Initial episodes were boring as the production house clearly lacked direction, planning, dynamic scripting and strategising as the show unfolded. They immediately realized it and lifted themselves to the spirit of the game to save the show and make it somewhat interesting.

Publication

The main television coverage takes the form of a highlights programme that is aired on Surya TV at 8:00 PM (Mon-Fri). Every day's episodes contain the main happenings of two days' previously recorded programs. The extra video footage that is not part of the daily episode are aired at 10:30 PM on the same day; this is called Malayalee House -Kaanakazhchakal. The episodes are also uploaded to the Surya TV YouTube channel.

Eviction by inmates

In the 1st week Bindu Varapuzha was eliminated by 11 votes.

In the 2nd week Akkshita was evicted by 9 votes.

In the 3rd week However Harishankar Kalavoor, who was a guest of this show, was eliminated due to health reasons.

In the 4th week Santosh Pandit was eliminated by 6 votes.

Up for public eviction the most times

Although the nominated inmates never went for public eviction, the inmates and the public were made belief that there names were going for public voting. In fact only nomination of inmates were through them. Eviction was decided by the MH team.

Eviction pattern

     Not in MH      Wild Card Entry      Evicted week      Disqualified      In MH      Finalist      Winner

Eviction Twist & Tale

Week 1 - Week 4: contestant had a poll to vote out another disliked contestant. Whoever got the maximum votes were evicted from that week.

Week 3: Harisankar Kavaloor was eliminated for medical reasons by a team of specialist doctors on the MH crew.

Week 4: Santhosh Pandit was eliminated by 6 votes by other contestants

Week 5: Public voting began this week. Narayanan Kutty was eliminated and became the first person to be eliminated by public voting. Due to huge public support Santhosh Pandit made a re-entry via wild card.

Week 6: Chitra Iyer was eliminated.

Week 7: Nominations were by playing a surprise game where each contestant is given a set of animal names which they had to match with other contestants. Those contestant whose names were not on the list went for nomination. Sherrin Varghese entered MH as a Planted Contestant.

Week 8: There was no eviction in this week. Rosin Jolly was taken out of MH for some time to make the MH contestants believe she had been eliminated. However, she walked in with a cake after few hours, much to the disdain of the general public.

Week 10: For the first time Saasha was not nominated for eviction.

Week 11: Rahul nominated three contestant for elimination (Asha Gopinathan, Santhosh Pandit and Sherrin Varghese) by winning a game of hiding a gem. Thinkal Bhal was automatically nominated for losing the game. Sneha Nambiar is asked to leave the house for the violation of MH rules. Santhosh Pandit was evicted this week.

Week 12: There was no eviction this week as a Ramadan gift for the nominees.

Week 13: Sherrin was evicted. The contestants played a game to win a Renault Duster SUV.

Week 14: Rahul won the Renault Duster SUV. Akshita made a re-entry as a Guest. There was no eviction.

Week 15: All the inmates were nominated for Week 16 elimination. Sandeep Menon made a guest appearance.

Week 16: A new competition was held for a Tata Nano Car. Ridhi made a guest appearance in the house. G S Pradeep was evicted. Sindhu Joy won the Nano Car task.

Week 17: MH completed 100 days on 13 August 2013.

Guests

The Malayalee House has witnessed temporary stays of many famous personalities. Names who appeared on the show as houseguests are listed below.

Riddhi Barua

Sreekandan Nair (3rd week)

Kaviyoor Ponnamma (5th week)

Kids - Chelsa and Melissa (Sojan's kids), Soupranik and Suryanarayanan (Pradeep's kids) and Tarun and Varun (Sneha's kids) (6th week)

Soumini (wife of GS Pradeep) visited her husband on their 16th wedding anniversary. A code language was used between them. The code language called 'sa language' can be decoded if one removes the 'sa' from each word and joins them together. E.g. for the word 'Rahul', GS used 'sara' - 'sahul'. He also asked "Chance Strongelle" (is my chance strong?). In turn his wife advised him "appi chettan cheyandayirinu" (something GS was not supposed to carry out). "arem kuttam parayaruthu." Basically GS used the code language to know the status of himself in MH.

Kadhal Sandhya (8th Week)

Sathyasheelan and Lekshmiyamma from Alappuzha, an old couple from real life

Pavithra Kurup (Neena's daughter)

Dr.Savitha Menon (Saasha's mother)

Dimpal Bhal (Thinkal's sister) (13th week)

Akshitha (14th week)

Sandeep Menon (15th week)

Riddhi Barua (16th week)

G.S. Pradeep (17th week)

Youtube hits

From the initial episodes itself, the program received very good viewership (approximately 0.25 - 0.3 million per episode) in the Surya TV YouTube Channel. However, the view count hit below 0.2 million from approximately days 40-50 (eviction week of Chitra Iyer). Later, though, for a brief period, the view count could hit above 0.2 million. From approximately days 70-80 (eviction week of Santhosh Pandit and the disqualification of Sneha Nambiar) the viewership again fell below 0.2 million.

Contestants allowed contact with outside world

Even though the second title of Malayali House indicates that there is no connection to the outer world, Pradeep's wife came into Malayali House on 19 June 2013. The episode shows G S Pradeep and his wife used a secret code language (sa language) to communicate with each other about the outside world and the viewer pulse. Also Pradeep's kids, Souparnika and Suryanarayanan; Sojan's kids, Chelsa and Crisa; and Sneha's kids, Varun and Tarun were in Malayali House on the 6th week. In later weeks more guests were introduced into the house, including Neena's daughter Pavithra. Rahul and Sneha won a contest and were allowed to go out of MH to a mall to view a movie. There, Sneha contacted the outside world using a stranger's phone. She did this in a restroom where there were no crew members. Later she was disqualified for breaking the rules. Thinkal's sister and Sasha's mother are also allowed in the house as guests.

Eviction, wild card re-entry and re-eviction of Santhosh Pandit

The hosts of the show decided to invite a public poll for the eviction of housemates from the 5th week onwards. But one of the housemates Santhosh Pandit, who was having the maximum audience support, was allowed to be evicted in the 4th week by the housemates. The audience of the show widely claim that this was a planned move by hosts of the show, to evict Pandit. The public support suggested that Pandit was perhaps better off than some of the other participants who have been exposed through the show. Later the makers of the show admitted that evicting him was a mistake. The makers of the show surprised the audience and also the housemates by bring back Pandit as a wildcard entry to the house at the end of the 5th week in a dramatic way. He was introduced back, by lowering him from the top with the help of a crane. Santosh Pandit was evicted again on 11th week by public voting.

TV display to MH inmates

As a consequence of "selected" visuals and conversations being displayed by the host, inmates are often tempted to take biased or polarized stands. This included displaying a selected conversation between two inmates gossiping about another inmate in his/her absence.

Criticism

It is possible that the show Malayali House, loosely modeled on shows like Big Brother and Bigg Boss, is gaining in TRPs. But what is also showing a sharp rise is the number of objections against it. While women’s organisations find the content offensive, social media is full of criticism about its tastelessness The Women Commission of Kerala came forward opposing Surya TV’s realty show Malayali House. The show was highly criticized on social networking sites. The commission has also asked for an explanation from Surya TV on this matter. The commission discussed this matter in a meeting at Thiruvananthapuram. The commission concluded that some participants are degrading female participants in the show. Earlier, the Democratic Women’s Association and DYFI had opposed this programme and asked for a ban to be put on it. "All the women are prostitutes and the men skirtchasers," said one transliterated comment by a young looking thumbnail-man on one of the MH clips. "Oh, what shame. Please remove the word Malayalee from the title," said a woman. These comments and media reports suggest abject disgust for MH, being expressed by a certain section of dominant Malayali society.

Rigged evictions

There has been an outcry on the internet over the eviction of Dalu Krishnadas, Sandeep Menon and Santhosh Pandit. During the nomination of Dalu, a Facebook poll in Surya TV channel showed the maximum votes of eviction to Neena Kurup and Thingal Bhal. In spite of receiving a huge number of votes for eviction, Neena was not evicted and Dalu was shown going out of the house. Sandeep Menon suffered a similar fate. During the eviction of Santhosh Pandit the second time, the following votes were received by the contestant for eviction in Facebook: Santhosh Pandit (199), Sherrin Varghese (780), Thinkal Bhal (270), and Asha Gopinathan (227). In spite of receiving the lowest votes, Santhosh Pandit was asked to leave the house. There was an outcry on Facebook and the YouTube channel about the eviction. It became very evident that the show was trying to protect some contestants by the 12th week. Twice elimination was canceled when Rosin Jolly was nominated, much to the disdain of the public. It looked as if results had been altered in favor of those contestants who shouted and created drama for the show. Those contestants who were calm and quiet were evicted one after another, as they didn't provide any scoops for the show and some of them were really "boring" and "dull" by remaining "calm"; the only exception was Dalu Krishnadas who was calm yet contributed a lot to the show.

Misleading the viewers

MH is taped two weeks before it is aired. Therefore, the program completed 100 days on 13 Aug 2013 but this was aired only on 26 Aug 2013. In spite of lagging for two weeks, MH had earlier listed people for eviction on Facebook and through SMS. However, these votes had no effect on the eviction because the program had already been taped and the contestant had been eliminated before the public voting happened.

MH brought in Sherrin Varghese as a planted guest. The viewers were never informed of this. Sherrin Varghese was kept in all the eviction nominations, even though MH had no intention of removing him through public voting. This misguided the viewers in voting. Many people voted against him instead of real nominees.

Bigg Boss copyright infringement

A case was filed by Endemol Group, the makers of the popular reality TV show Bigg Boss, against the Malayalee House makers (Sun TV and Vedartha Entertainment Pvt. Ltd.) for copying the production format of Bigg Boss. Endemol Group filed a suit in Bombay High Court against Sun TV Network Ltd. and four others, seeking an injunction to restrain them from exploiting, telecasting, publicizing or continuing to telecast the reality show Malayalee House which had allegedly infringing the Group's copyright in the production format of Bigg Boss.