Tej Pratap Yadav walks into a classroom at a university in Patna and goes from teaching students yoga to playing the flute in the span of five minutes. No reality show is doing it like Bhojpuri Bawaal.
It’s the cringiest, most watchable reality content India has at the moment. An added treat is that, for once, we don’t see Bhojpuri celebrities as painted in stereotypes.
The participants are some of the biggest names in Bhojpuri cinema—Pawan Singh, Dinesh Lal Yadav, Amrapali Dubey, Kajal Raghwani and, of course, Tej Pratap Yadav, who is emerging as the funniest character on the show. He carries all the chaos of the reality format.
At the university, Tej Pratap shows students photographs of Bhojpuri stars, and they identify almost everyone. But when he shows them his own photograph from his pilot training days, nobody recognises him. His reaction to this is easily the funniest moment on the show, perhaps because it’s so real.
Then the show becomes even more unpredictable.
Tej Pratap suddenly starts teaching yoga. He then plays the flute and asks a PhD scholar sitting nearby to play the instrument. When the scholar fails to play it, Tej Pratap simply wipes the flute on the student’s T-shirt. Moments later, when another student starts singing, he gets emotional.
That is what makes Bhojpuri Bawaal so watchable. It does not feel like a traditional reality show where every moment has been engineered for television. It’s as if someone simply left the camera running and decided to see what would happen.
No scripts, please!
Podcaster Shubhankar Mishra is also there, though not as a participant. He appears in a few scenes and narrates what is happening in the episode. But there is almost no need for him to do so. The participants themselves are constantly exaggerating what is happening in their lives.
The best example is Pawan Singh.
In one scene, someone locks his car, and the key goes missing. The camera itself turns chaotic with his mood. Pawan grabs the door handle and shakes it with all his power. In another moment, he becomes a cook, preparing chicken. Then he travels to Ballia, where he was previously attacked. Even this visit turns chaotic, and eventually, the event he travelled for is cancelled.
Then there is Tej Pratap, who wants to unite all the Bhojpuri stars. He invites everyone to a dinner party. It becomes the most unorganised, chaotic, even scandalous table in Bhojpuri cinema. Everyone is fighting and arguing, and at the end, Tej Pratap walks in playing his flute to pacify the attendees. I have not seen anything quite like this, from Bigg Boss to Alliance.
Most reality shows in India are game-based. Participants are put inside a house, given tasks, divided into teams, made to compete, and eventually pushed toward conflict to get more screen time before they’re voted out.
Bhojpuri Bawaal has no need for that.
Across the episodes released so far, the participants spend little time with each other. The show follows them, navigating the gossip, conflicts, and relationships that already exist between them.
Obviously, there are moments that feel manufactured. When Pawan Singh leaves the show, for instance, the makers try to present it as a real, spontaneous moment fight, but it does not entirely feel that way.
Yet, Bhojpuri Bawaal is filled with enough unpredictable moments to make even reality show experts struggle to understand its secret sauce.
In most reality shows, participants do not necessarily behave like their on-screen selves. The format creates a different personality—nicer, angrier, better, or worse than their real personas. Here, that transition does not happen.
The celebrities live their stardom exactly as they do outside the show. They get angry. They argue. They try to control the show rather than simply follow what the makers want from them.
That is what makes Bhojpuri Bawaal so fascinating. The show doesn’t make its participants smaller for reality television. It lets them remain exactly who they are: loud, chaotic, emotional, and unapologetically larger than life.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)