Genre Comedy Country of origin India No. of seasons 4 | Created by Akshay Sharma Original language(s) Hindi | |
Judges Shekhar SumanNavjot Singh SidhuUmer Sharif | ||
The Great Indian Laughter Challenge is the first and one of the most successful stand-up comedy shows on Indian television. It is a competition of stand-up comedians that is presented on STAR One. All the four seasons were conceived and created by Pankaj Saraswat of Violet Picture Company. Produced by Endemol India, the fourth series of the show launched on June 6, 2008.
Contents
It ran through four seasons where stand-up comedians and performers came together and showed their comedy skills to judges, live audience and people. The show was judged by Shekhar Suman, an eminent TV personality and Navjot Singh Sidhu, a famous former cricketer and cricket commentator known for his humorous "Sidhuisms." The show's initial episodes were hosted by Parizaad Kolah Marshall and later she was replaced by Shonali Nagrani. The set was designed by noted Bollywood production designer Nitin Chandrakant Desai.
Seasons
In the first season, Sunil Pal was the winner and Raju Srivastava was runner up. In the second season contestants from Pakistan were present and the winner Rauf Lala was from Pakistan. The third season was won by Kapil Sharma and the first runner up was Chandan Prabhakar both from Amritsar. Many other talented comedians like Siraj Khan, Sudesh Lehari, Rajiv Thakur, Bharti Singh, Navin Prabhakar, Jassi Kochar, Khayaali,Dipoo Srivastava, Ahsaan Qureshi have appeared in the show.
The first two seasons were followed by another show, The Great Indian Laughter Champions, which included top performers of the previous shows. Here also the judges were Sidhu and Shekar including some celebrity guests as well.
The fourth season features judges Navjot Singh Sidhu and popular actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha, who has replaced Shekhar Suman. Recently the first woman to participate was Aarti Kandpal. The fourth season's finalists were Rasbihari Gaur, Bharti Singh, Suresh Albela, and a duo from Pakistan. The winner for the fourth season after a tough laughter war was Suresh Albela.