Have managed to watched both the episode’s of Mahabharata aired in the last two days. I grew up watching B.R.Chopra’s Mahabharata and was obviously curious to know how would Ekta match the epic. The whole household sat to watch it, it was the KBC of our times. Some of the characters like Mukesh Khanna playing Bhishma, Kiran Juneja as Ganga, Rupa Ganguly as Draupadi Nitish Bharadwaja as Krishna, Puneet Issar as Duryodhan have been etched in our minds forever. Was wondering how the current characters would live up to this.
So let me give you a low down on the good and the bad.

“The Good”
1.Well researched- loved the way the part about Ganesh writing the Mahabharata has been included.
2.The locations are beautiful
3.Excellent start-Very uncoventionally they started the episode with the game of chausar

4.The men look real hot –had no clue that Bhim & Yudhistra could be so handsome
5.The costumes are easy on the eye
6.Some good casting- Picking up Kiran Karmarkar as Shantanu was nice, just don’t remember who played Shantanu in the earlier version
7.Sakshi ‘Parvati’ Tanwar is good as Ganga- Understated and Elegant. Definite match to Kiran Juneja
8.Most importantly, the pace is fantastic it moves real quick, the mystery of Ganga would be sorted in just one episode.

“The Bad”
1.Some really bad animation-specially the when they showed the ‘Sudharshan Chakra’ during the ‘Chirharan’ bit
2.Sticking to the ‘Sudharshan Chakra’ it would have made just so much more sense to show Krishna than the image
3.Playing of ‘Om jai jagdish’ while the Chakra appeared to save Draupadi- definitely thumbs down
4.Shakuni is way overboard with his acting-sounds & looks psyched rather than a cunning and evil
5.Anita Hansadassani as Draupadi looks nice, but acting way overboard. Her shrieking would definately shatter the glass
6.Definitely needs to tone down on the jarring music and the facial expressions of some of the actors.
All in all I think I would definitely give it a 6/10 and keep my fingers crossed that sticks to the pace and doesn’t stretch it like her Saas-Bahu saga. Worth a dekho once.