From Gokuldham to Central Perk: Why Indian Millennials Are Stuck in a Glorious TV Time Warp
June 29, 2025 | by Swapneel Mohite
Let’s play a game. I’ll start a line, you
finish it: “Jungle jungle baat chali hai…”
If you immediately sang “…pata chala
hai!” in your head, congratulations, you’re a certified Indian millennial.
Your brain is a beautiful, chaotic archive of memories that involve a grainy
Doordarshan signal, a specific Sunday morning routine, and a deep, unshakable
love for TV shows that are now old enough to have a mid-life crisis.
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| Chaddi pehen ke phool khila hai! |
Let’s be real. After a day of
adulting—which mostly seems to involve muting yourself on Zoom calls and
wondering why your back hurts—what do you really
want to watch? That new gritty sci-fi epic that requires a flowchart to
understand?
Nah. You’re firing up an old friend. Maybe
it’s Chandler Bing, maybe it’s Jethalal Gada, or maybe it’s the theme song of DuckTales (a-woo-oo!).
In a world drowning in content, we’re still
desperately clinging to our childhood life rafts. The question is, why?
Our Binge-Watching Brains Were
Forged in the Fires of Doordarshan
Before Netflix and its judgy “Are you
still watching?” prompts, there was the OG appointment viewing. Our
addiction was born on those hallowed Sunday mornings, when the entire nation
was collectively glued to the TV for The
Jungle Book, followed by the high-flying adventures of Baloo in TaleSpin and Uncle Scrooge diving into
his money bin.
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| Disney’s Block Party!!!! |
And the summers? They were spent watching Funtime, waiting for the sheer
awesomeness that was Giant Robot (or
as we all called it, “C’mon, Giant Robot!”). The stakes felt so high!
Would he defeat the alien monster? The anticipation was real, and it was a
collective experience shared with every kid on the block.
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| Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot. |
That’s the foundation. Our comfort-watching
habit isn’t new; it’s a muscle we’ve been training since childhood.
The TV Equivalent of a Phantom
Sweet Cigarette
Today’s shows are brilliant, but man, they
are work. You need to track complex
plotlines, remember who betrayed whom, and analyze subtext like you’re writing
a thesis.
Our comfort shows, on the other hand, are
the TV equivalent of mom’s daal chawal or finding a Phantom sweet cigarette in
an old drawer. They demand absolutely nothing.
We know Kevin Arnold is pining for Winnie
Cooper in The Wonder Years. We know
Will Smith is about to get tossed out of the mansion by a furious Uncle Phil in
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. We know
the chaotic family in Dekh Bhai Dekh
or Hum Paanch is about to turn a
simple problem into a comedy of errors. It’s not boring; it’s a warm, fuzzy
blanket of predictability.
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| A Blast from the Past! |
“A Show About
Nothing” is Actually Everything
Then you have the Mount Rushmore of comfort
TV, featuring shows like Friends and Seinfeld. While Friends gave us the “found family” we all craved—a tribe
of our own to navigate life with—Seinfeld
gave us something even more profound: the glorious relief of
“nothing.”
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| A show about nothing! |
Seinfeld was famously “a show about nothing.” Four self-absorbed
people complaining about puffy shirts, close-talkers, and double-dipping. And
that’s its genius! In a world that demands we have a strong opinion on
everything, a show about the mundane everyday experiences of life feels like a revolutionary
act of chilling out. When everything else feels so heavy, a show about
absolutely nothing is actually everything
we need.
The Undisputed King of the
Family Dinner: Gokuldham Society
Of course, no discussion about Indian
comfort TV is complete without hailing the one true king: Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah. The old episodes, specifically.
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| Problems toh hain sabke pass, bas nazariye ki hai baat! |
TMKOC is the idealized version of the “society” life we all
know—a mini-India in one building where every festival is celebrated with gusto
and Daya Ben’s “Hey Maa, Mataji!” is a national cry for help. It’s
the one show that everyone, from your 7-year-old son to your 90-year-old nani,
can watch together during dinner without anyone getting bored or offended. It’s
low-stakes, high-reward, family-friendly perfection.
So yes, maybe we’re stuck in a time warp.
But these shows are more than just moving pictures. They’re a portal to a time
when life was simpler, when our biggest stress was waiting a whole week for the
next episode, and when a giant robot fighting a space monster was the most epic
thing we’d ever seen.