In times when old shows and old episodes of new shows are making it to television in an attempt to fill in the blank timeslots on various channels, Doordarshan decided to bring back their cult shows Ramayan and Mahabharat to re-run on DD National and DD Bharati. While Ramayan aired a total of 78 episodes and ran from January 1987 to July 1988, Mahabharat ran for a total of 94 episodes from October 1988 to June 1990. Ramayan on DD National and Mahabharat on DD Bharati, Here's The Schedule and Telecast Time for The Ramanand Sagar and BR Chopra Mythological Shows on Doordarshan Channels. 

And taking our reader down memory lane of the 90s, here's some trivia that we dug up on the BR Chopra show about the biggest battle of the Hindu mythology. Doordarshan Brings Ramayan And Mahabharat Back On TV During Lockdown, Twitterati Cheers It With Memes

TRIVIA

Juhi Chawla was offered the role of Draupadi, but she was also offered Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak. And none other than BR Chopra himself asked Juhi to chose the big screen and guess Juhi's decision did not backfire.

Apart from Juhi, actress Ramya Krishna, a popular face in the Telugu film industry was also shortlisted for the role along with Roopa Ganguly, for the role of Draupadi. However, Roopa took the cake her, considering her Hindi was better.

Actor Firoz Khan was chosen to play the role of Arjuna. However, to not get confused with Bollywood actor Firoz Khan, Firoz changed his screen name to Arjun.

Bollywood actors Chunky Pandey and Govinda were brought on board to play Abhimanyu but chose to opt-out when they got signed for films.

The show was telecast with subtitles in the UK and clocked a staggering viewership of 5 million.

Mahabharat beat the 100 million viewership per week record of Ramayan and was said to have enjoyed a 92% viewership per episode.

Mukesh 'Shaktiiman' Khanna was first cast in the show as Dronacharya, but BR Chopra, later on, thought that he was better suited for Bhishma.

Starting March 28, 2020, Mahabharat will air on Doordarshan's DD Bharati channel at 12 pm noon and 7 pm in the evening. Ramayan's telecast began today with hour-long episodes being telecast once in the morning from 9 am to 10 am and in the evening from 9 pm to 10 pm.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 28, 2020 04:56 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).