Arya, Regina judge Mass Pasanga vs Class Ponnunga

Regina Cassandra has a theory about the name of her new show. “When I heard the title, I was curious, and a little suspicious,” she said. “Why Mass Pasanga vs Class Ponnunga? Why not Class Ponnunga vs Mass Pasanga? I have a feeling Arya asked them to name it this way.”

Arya and Regina, who also share the screen in Ananthan Kaadu, are the judges, and mentors of sorts, on Mass Pasanga vs Class Ponnunga, a new celebrity contest on Zee Tamil that premieres on Sunday, October 11 at 8.30 pm. It splits celebrity contestants from different fields into two teams, the boys on one side and the girls on the other, and makes them compete on style, attitude, personality and talent. Kiki Vijay and Azhar host.

Arya kept his pitch short. “This is a 100 percent out-and-out fun and entertainment guaranteed show,” he said. “There is a really interesting lineup of male and female celebrities, and they are going to express their style, their attitude, their emotions, their talent. It is not just a competition. There is fun, there is friendship, there are a lot of jolly moments.” Regina said that whoever wins any given round, “there will be no shortage of entertainment.”

The new show shares the weekend with a fresh season of Saregamapa, the singing contest that has run past ten seasons and recently celebrated crossing 500 episodes with an event in Coimbatore. Srinivas, Vijay Prakash and Shweta Mohan are back on the judges’ panel, Archana hosts, and the season opens with its big audition rounds on October 10 and 11 at 7 pm.

Srinivas, who has been with the show for a decade, called it a stage that turns ordinary people into achievers. “When someone from a village wins, it makes me very happy,” he said. “I have judged so many shows, but I have never seen scale like this.” Vijay Prakash has the neatest story on the panel: he first came to Saregamapa as a contestant years ago and now sits in the judge’s chair. “This show has given a lot of people a career and a life,” he said. “Contestants who came from here are performing all over the world. The stage, the visuals, the production have all gone big this season, but the soul of the show has never changed.”

The headline change, according to Shweta Mohan, is the set. “For the first time, we are going to see Saregamapa on a 360-degree set,” she said. “Wherever you turn, you can feel the music.” She described the Saregamapa family as parrots living in one nest, and said the judges act as mentors, friends and guides to the contestants as much as critics.

Zee Tamil chief channel officer VS Raghavan said Saregamapa had brought about social change beyond entertainment, and described Mass Pasanga vs Class Ponnunga as a show about men and women understanding and appreciating their differences, with Arya and Regina as role models. Programming head Kaushik Narasimhan said both shows had been built on a scale viewers had not seen from the channel before.

Saregamapa airs on Saturdays and Sundays at 7 pm. Mass Pasanga vs Class Ponnunga airs every Sunday at 8.30 pm, starting October 11.