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Tamil television lends itself to some interesting initiatives in gender empowerment through its programming in 3 categories – fiction, reality, and talent shows. This chapter provides a glimpse into television programmes on leading Tamil channels over the last decade (2000–10) from a gender perspective. Focusing particularly on women and transgender characters/hosts, emotional and psychological quotients of the shows and their audiences, moments of dramatic intensity, the chapter demonstrates how the vernacular televisual representations were quite different from the stereotypical portrayals of the mainstream ‘national’ television, even though the programmes were produced, televised, and received within the broader patriarchal framework of Tamil cultural and political contexts. The chapter, as a whole, intends to look at the production, representation and identification of Tamil television soaps and reality shows as vehicle for spotlighting gender issues and alternative sexualities in the public domain.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198092056.003.0012