Zee Smile

Shreyas Talpade may not have been seen on the big screen after <em>Iqbal</em>, but the dimunitive actor's fans can catch him on Zee Smile's <em>Home Sweet Home</em> on the occasion of April Fool's Day. Shreyas will make a guest appearance on this show for the April Fool's Day Special episode to be aired on 3 April 2006. The episode revolves around Kiku chacha (played by Kiku) who makes a fool of the kids by boasting about his old friendship with filmstar Shreyas Talpade to his nieces Pooja, Aarti and Karishma but in reality Kiku doesn't even have a faint acquaintance with Shreyas.

Anuj Saxena's production house Maverick is all set to produce it's first show -- <em>Khiladi No 1</em> to be aired on Zee Smile. The show will be hosted by Sameer Kochar of <em>Dangerous fame</em> and will go on air on 7:30 p.m. on Fridays from 16 December. "I have hosted shows before and since this is a nice experience because I deal with young collegians. It's more on the whackier side which includes boxing, catching chickens, fighting in the mud and others," says Sameer.

Zee Smile is all set to launch a new romantic comedy show titled <em>Kahani Shuru with Love Guru</em> in December. "The show will have two parts of which one will be an online show and the other will be a fiction based romantic comedy which will take you through four stories. The love guru is like a sutradhar of sorts; he poses as a cab driver or a postman and comes in anywhere anytime and will have the love guru as an agony aunt for the live callers from India and abroad," says Parvati Balagopalan, director of <em>Kahani Shuru with Love Guru</em>.

Ninad Kamat, Sandy of Zee Smile's <em>Home Sweet Home</em> is walking out of the show. No hard feelings though, it's simply Ninad's hectic schedule that's come in the way of his acting commitment. "I don't get time to come 14 to 15 days a month on the sets as I am recording for various ad films. And as far as Paritossh (Paritossh Painter, the show's producer) is concerned, we have been friends for long and have worked out matters between us," says Ninad.

After all the speculation of him leaving <em>Batliwala House No. 43</em>, Bhaktiar Irani has grabbed another show in his kitty. Bhaktiar will enter the Zee Smile show, <em>Home Sweet Home</em>. Joining Bhaktiar, on his comic act will be another lady who will play his sister and hasn't been finalized as yet. The show's producer/ director Paritosh Painter says, "The show will have two new characters, Ranveer (Bhaktiar Irani) and Nikita who will come to live with family. Nikita will get married to Imran Khan who plays Sid on the family comic."

After a host of re-runs like Nukkad and Waghle Ki Duniya and some original inspirations like <em>Home Sweet Home</em>, Zee Smile launches another weekly sitcom tonight. Titled <em>Bechara Big B</em>, it's a story about a confused and forgetful man, says producer Gulshan Sachdev, who has earlier produced soaps like <em>Zanjeerien, Aap Ki Adalat, Jhoot Bole Kawwa Kate</em> and <em>Pancham</em> for Zee.

Celebs turned out in full force at the party thrown by Paritosh Painter and Nirav Parekh to celebrate the launch of their new projects- an English play <em>See No Evil Hear No Evil Speak No Evil</em>, a Hindi play <em>Kya Kare Control Nahi Hota</em> and a show on Zee Smile <em>Home Sweet Home</em> at Tian in suburban Mumbai on Tuesday.