Old Popular Television Hindi Serials of Doordarshan

Doordarshan was the first TV channel in India. The first telecast of Doordarshan was started on September 15, 1959 when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister of India. Then it was known as ‘Television India’. Later in 1975, its Hindi renaming was done as ‘Doordarshan’. Initially, Doordarshan’s broadcast was limited to Delhi and some surrounding areas. Only news was broadcast on this. In 1982 Asian Games were organized in Delhi. Which was broadcast live for the first time by Doordarshan. One of the benefits of the Asian Games being held in Delhi was that Doordarshan, which was seen in black and white, became colourful. Because of which the sale of color television sets in India increased significantly. The Cricket World Cup match held in 1983 increased the popularity of TV sets in India.

Since then Doordarshan started telecasting agriculture related program ‘Krishi Darshan’ and Hindi cinema songs program ‘Chitrahar’ along with news. Then every Sunday evening, a Hindi film was telecasted. Due to which the popularity of Doordarshan increased a lot. The first Hindi serial on Doordarshan was ‘Hum Log’, which started airing on 7 July 1984. It became quite popular in India. After this, seeing the increasing reach of Doordarshan to the far-flung villages of India, the attention of film producers turned to making TV serials. Then many serials started being produced. Here is the list of old serials aired on Doordarshan.

• Hum Log (7 July 1984 – 17 December 1985) – (Director – P. Kumar Vasudev, Cast – Vinod Nagpal, Jayshri Arora, Rajesh Puri, Abhinav Chaturvedi, Seema Bhargava, Divya Seth, Sushma Seth, Aasif Sheikh, Seema Pahwa, Ashok Kumar as Narrator)
• Rajani (1985) – (Director – Basu Chatterjee, Cast – Priya Tendulkar, Karan Razdan, Amar Upadhyay, Vikram Gokhle, Sayaji Shinde, Shah Rukh Khan as Guest Appearances)
• Karamchand (June 1985-1987) – (Director – Pankaj Parashar, Cast – Pankaj Kapur, Sushmita Mukherjee, Sucheta Khanna)
• Vikram Aur Betaal (13 October 1985 – 6 April 1986) – (Director – Ramanand Sagar, Cast – Arun Govil, Sajjan, Arvind Trivedi, Deepika Chikhalia, Vijay Arora, Sunil Lahiri, Rama Vij, Sameer Rajda, etc)
• Buniyaad (May 1986 – May 1987) – (Director – Ramesh Sippy and Jyoti Sarup, Cast – Sudhir Pandey, Rajesh Puri, Bharti Achrekar, Meher Mittal Girija Shankar, Asha Sachdev, Pallvi Joshi, Alok Nath, Anita Kanwar, Goga Kapoor, Dilip Tahil, Soni Razdan, Neena Gupta, Mazahar Khan, Leela Mishra, Sudhir Dalvi, Anjana Mumtaz, Kanwaljit Singh, etc)
• Malgudi Days (1986-1988) – (Director – Shankar Nag, Cast – Girish Karnad, Master Manjunath, Vaishali Kasaravalli, Deven Bhojani, Anant Nag, Ramesh Bhat, Arundhati Nag, B, Jayashree, etc).
• Ramayan (25 January 1987 – 31 July 1988) – (Director – Ramanand Sagar, Cast – Arun Govile, Deepika Chikhlia, Suni Lahiri, Arvind Trivedi, Dara Singh, Sameer Rajda, Jayshree Gadkar, Padma Khanna, Lalita Pawar, Vijay Arora, Mukesh Rawal. Bal Dhuri, Sanjay Jog, Sudhir Dalvi, etc).
• Mahabharat (2 October 1988 – 24 June 1990) – (Director – Ravi Chopra, Cast – Mukesh Khanna, Nitish Bhardwaj, Gajendra Chauhan, Firoz Khan Arjun, Praveen Kumar Sobti, Girija Shankar, Goofy Paintal, Surendrapal, Pankaj Dheer, Nazneen, Rupa Ganguly, Puneet Issar, Virendra Razdan, Dharmesh Tiwari, Lalit Tiwari, Kiran Juneja, etc.)

• Bharat Ek Khoj (13 November 1988 – 12 November 1989) – ( Director – Shyam Benegal, Cast – Roshan Seth, Om Puri, Tom Alter, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Naseeruddin Shah, Lucky Ali, Seema Kelkar, Mita Vashisht, Pallavi Joshi, Anjan Srivastav, Sohaila Kapur, Ila Arun, Irrfan Khan, Piyush Mishra, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, etc)
• Tamas (1988) – (Director – Govind Nihlani, Cast – Pankaj Kapur, Om Puri, Amrish Puri, Deepa Shahi, Surendra Pal, Saeed Jaffrey, KK Raina, Bhishma Shahi, A K Hungal etc)
• Vishwamitra (1989) – (Director – Dasari Narayana Rao, Cast – Mukesh Khanna, Arun Govil, Arvind Trivedi, Bhanupriya, Shantipriya, etc)
• Fauji (1989) – (Director – Raj Kumar Kapoor, Cast – Shah Rukh Khan, Rakesh Sharma, Amina Shervani, etc)
• Circus (1989 – 1990) – (Director – Aziz Mirza, Cast – Shahrukh Khan, Sameer Khakhar, Sunil Shendey, Renuka Shahane, Pavan Malhotra, Ashutosh Gowarikar, Makrand Deshpande, Neeraj Vora, etc).
• Mungerilal Ke Haseen Sapne (1989-1990) – (Director – Prakash Jha, Cast – Raghubir Yadav, Ruma Ghosh, Kamia Malhotra)
• Chanakya (8 September 1991 – 9 August 1992) – (Director – Chandraprakash Dwivedi, Cast – Chandraprakash Dwivedi, Irrfan Khan, Sanjay Mishra, Dinesh Shakul, Suraj Chaddha, Surendra Pal, etc)
• Byomkesh Bakshi (1993) – (Director – Basu Chatterjee, Cast – Rajit Kapur, K. K. Raina, Sukanya Kulkarni)

• Krishna (18 July 1993 – 5 October 1997) – (Director – Ramanand Sagar/Anand Sagar/Moti Sagar, Cast – Sarvadaman D. Banerjee, Swapnil Joshi, Deepak Deulkar, Pinky Parikh, Reshma Modi, etc)
• Shanti (1994) – (Director – Adi Pocha, Cast – Mandira Bedi, Yatin Karyekar, Anup Soni, Mohini Sharma, Rajesh Tailang, Amit Behl, Vijay Aidasani, Sumukhi Pendse, Iravati Harshe, Aman Verma, Amar Talwar, Ashwini Kalsekar).
• Chandrakanta (1994-1996) – (Director – Sunil Agnihotri, Cast – Shikha Swaroop, Shahbaz Khan, Pankaj Dheer, Mukesh Khanna, Akhilendra Mishra, Javed Khan, Irrfan Khan, Kausambi Ganguly, Vijayendra Ghatge, Parikshit Sahni, Rajendra Gupta, etc)
• Swabhimaan (6 April 1995 – 1 May 1998) – (Director – Mahesh Bhatt, Cast – Deepak Parashar, Kunika, Rohit Roy, Kitu Gidwani, Prabha Sinha, Ashutosh Rana, Manoj Bajpayee, Sharad Kapoor, Abhimanyu Singh, Anju Mahendru, Mita Vashisth, Pankaj Berry, Kiran Juneja, Vineet Kumar Harsh Chhaya, Kumud Mishra, etc.)
• Shaktimaan (13 September 1997 – 27 March 2005) – (Director – Dinker Jani, Cast – Mukesh Khanna, Vaishnavi, Kitu Gidwani, Surendra Pal, Gajendra Chauhan, Raju Srivastav, Ashwini Kelsekar, Lalit Parimoo, Tom Alter, etc.)
• Suraag – The Clue (1999) – (Director – Gautam Adhikari, Cast – Sudesh Berry, Manoj Joshi, Markand Deshpande, Arun Bali etc)