In January 2024 comedian Aashish Solanki announced the first season of The Pretty Good Roast Show. Featuring comedy bigwigs including Anubhav Singh Bassi, Aakash Gupta and Harsh Gujral and internet sensations Gaurav Taneja (better known as Flying Beast) and Kusha Kapila, the show was a viral success, racking up over 85 million views on YouTube.

That June, Samay Raina released the debut episode of his format show India’s Got Latent. It went on to become a national phenomenon. Raina’s star skyrocketed with the show’s fame, earning him a spot on Kaun Banega Crorepati opposite Amitabh Bachchan, as well as numerous sponsorships and brand deals from Spinny, Bold Care and Cashify to name a few. Political parties jumped on the bandwagon too, creating memes inspired by the show.

The humble format show, it seems, is back in fashion. Suddenly, a lot of comedians are stepping into the ring. Nirmal Pillai and Abishek Kumar have created a community with their dating show First Move, Vivek Samtani has gained momentum with Andha Pyaar and Madhur Virli has given a platform to up-and-coming comics with his Kill Tony-inspired show Madhur Model. In the last two months, we’ve seen Gaurav Kapoor and Swati Sachdeva enter the ring with Lie Hard and Who Let The Drunks Out respectively. And now Rahul Dua has announced his brand new format show Pitch Please. Which brings us to the question—why are comedians increasingly turning to format shows?

The short answer is that it offers a steady churn of content to feed the algorithm. In today’s extremely online world, artists and creators are constantly battling to keep their audience’s attention. “The internet is a very unforgiving medium now,” said comedian Aanchal Agrawal who hosts the live match-making show Assisted Dating. “If you don’t post, it just forgets us.”

As a comedian, going up on stage, workshopping jokes, tightening the set to eventually release it on YouTube takes a lot of effort and time. Agrawal’s quick fix for this problem was to create a show that gives her a steady flow of content to satiate her fans’ comedy needs, without all the time and monetary investment of a standup comedy clip.

“The idea is to regularly upload something on YouTube because it definitely helps to sell tickets to the standup shows,” adds comedian Vivek Samtani, creator of Andha Pyaar, a show where blindfolded contestants have to choose between three suitors. For him, the contest format was an interesting alternative to the crowd work videos that many comedians have turned to in an effort to blow up on the ‘Gram and sell tickets. “Writing a well thought out bit that the audience can relate to takes quite a lot of time. That’s why I came up with this idea. And I’m sure it also helped my fellow panelists sell tickets too.”

These shows also help comedians to showcase their personalities a little more freely to their audience. For example, both Samtani and Agrawal’s standup material focuses heavily on dating and relationships. So it was natural for them to stick to the brief and create something that supplements their standup. “I am trying to create a personality that sticks with my audience,” Samtani told us. “And dating is one of the most timeless concepts in everyone’s lives which is why Andha Pyaar works well.”

For Agrawal, Assisted Dating was also a great way to get some stage practice. “The stage I’m at as a comedian currently, it’s not very feasible to sell solo shows every day,” she told us. Her format show was her way of getting comfortable in front of a live audience. And with other comedians on the panel having her back, there isn’t the stress of carrying the entire performance on your shoulders.

While format shows have hit the headlines over the last year-and-a-half, they’ve always had a place in the Indian comedy landscape. Older comedy collectives such as AIB and EIC experimented a lot with sketches and live format shows. “The fact of the matter is, when you have a group of people, there’s a diverse bunch of opinions and thoughts,” Sahil Shah, co-founder of EIC and host of Unpopular Opinions told us. “And that’s always conducive for good comedy. We were all doing regular standup anyway, but we also wanted to experiment with some other things.” That’s how they came up with the concepts for their show EIC vs Bollywood, which included subtle roasts and parodies of Hindi cinema and eventually interviews with A-list actors.

Shah also points out that a good format show concept can stay fresh and interesting for a long time. Once you’ve heard a joke, odds are you won’t enjoy it as much the second time around. But with a format show, you can bring on a new guest or incorporate new questions and it’s a brand new experience for both, the performers and the audience, every single time.

Comedian, producer and Underground Comedy Club founder Harman Preet Singh says that format shows also help to sell more tickets because it’s most likely a group activity. He has observed that groups of four or five friends come out for these shows. “They come out in groups because they know there is an immediate hit that can be expected,” he said. “If it’s a dating show they might push their friend to be on stage and such. That’s the vibe of these shows. And that’s why these shows also have a very different energy live versus what you see online.”

However, he also has a slightly cynical outlook to the rise of these shows. “Comedians are lazy, bro,” he told us. “They want something to keep the audience engaged and not lose them. And they find the easiest ways to do it.”

This casual and laid-back energy of the panels makes for some great casual viewing, opines Singh. “As a comedian when I’m watching Kill Tony or Latent, it’s not like my life depends on it,” he says. “I’m not looking at the premises, tags or punchlines. It’s just a very engaging podcast for me. And any comedian can riff off of anything that is being said. Topics are coming from left field. That’s probably what engages the audience as well.”

For comedian Raunaq Rajani—creator of the show Relationsh!t Advice—it’s this unscripted nature that is most exciting. “Even when I’m watching a comic, when they go off-script because of something that happens, I enjoy it more because it means they’re present in the moment.”

This off-the-cuff energy is partly why Rajani’s show has had such a successful five-year-long run. His idea was to bring the banter that was limited to the green room onto the stage. “It’s like a fun hang out that the audience gets to be a part of. And from the feedback I get, that’s how people see it, and that’s why the show has stuck with them.”

A regular audience member at Rajani’s show agreed that this spontaneity is what keeps them coming back. “Everyone is encouraged to yell out their opinions during the show, unlike other shows where heckling is frowned upon,” they told us. “It’s also that you get to see a different side to these comedians. They’re more relaxed, we get to see their camaraderie. And the best part is the bonus content. A lot of it doesn’t make it to the final edit, so checking out these shows live is the best case scenario.”

In some cases, it’s the only chance you’ll get to see these shows. Varun Thakur, Aadar Malik, Kautuk Srivastava and Neville Shah’s podcast The Internet Said So, announced an Uncensored tour last year, that could only be experienced live. The tag line for the show was ‘The TISS episode that will never air’. And only a couple of weeks back, Thakur, Malik and Srivastava closed out an international tour of their new format show Maa Kasam, where audience members and internet personalities come to share their own bizarre experiences.

View this post on Instagram

While these comedians have found success with format shows, its not as easy as it looks. There’s a lot of trial and error involved to first land on a potent premise. Samtani experimented with two format shows before sticking with Andha Pyaar. Agrawal tried her hand at two dating-related shows before getting all the logistics right with Assisted Dating. And even if you have have the concept down pat, it doesn’t guarantee success.

“A bomb at a standup show is neither going to make or break me,” Samtani said. “But when I’m recording a format show, there’s a lot more money involved. I’ll book a venue, there’s some production involved and I’ll list two shows. And if both those shows bomb I’m down an ample amount of money.”

Agrawal has to go through a rigorous vetting process and do thorough background checks for the people who sign up for her matchmaking show. And with Shah’s Unpopular Opinions, where he brings on people to share their hot takes, he never knows what they might say on stage. “One girl came up and very confidently was talking about how it should be normal to abuse relatives,” said Shah. “Now, I’m looking for the right time to put out that bit. I’ll have to blur her face and all. But there are some that had to be completely deleted. Luckily, we’re the ones who have the creative control at the end. And it’s also about making them comfortable on stage because they aren’t performers. So that’s another variable.”

Despite these challenges, building a format show is great way for a comedian to get a bank of content, foster a bond with their audience members and create a closely knit community. If everything goes well, there’s big bag to be collected in the form of sponsorships and brand deals. As a performer, it’s natural to want to build an IP to ensure your next show is sold out. Barring the controversy, FIRs and court dates who wouldn’t want to create the next Latent?