‘Musikahan’ returns

CAYABYAB. Makes an occasional comeback.

FOR A LONG time now, we’ve been urging TV producers to revive the exceptional weekly musical show, “Ryan, Ryan, Musikahan,” with Ryan Cayabyab as program host and Leo Rialp directing.

New and established singers in the biz loved performing in that show, becuase it brought out the very best in them. Viewers similarly valued the weekly telecasts on the tube.

The good news is that a new telecast of “Musikahan” may be viewed this month (until the 27th) on ABS-CBN as a special treat on Sky Cable. The new show showcases guests like Morissette Amon and Darren Espanto.

Incidentally, “Musikahan” was also revived as a Christmas special last year. We hope that its new telecast this month will be patronized by many viewers, so ABS-CBN will be encouraged to bring it back more often—and on free TV.

We’re also feeling quite upbeat about Star Cinema’s latest viewing treat, “The Achy Breaky Hearts,” with Jodi Sta. Maria, Richard Yap and Ian Veneracion topbilling. The production’s viewing “hook” and top selling factor is that Jodi has previously appeared with her male costars in two separate TV hits—with Richard in “Be Careful with My Heart,” and with Ian in “Pangako Sa’Yo.”

The expectation is that fans will want to watch their new film, megged by Antoinette Jadaone, to “take sides” (Team Ian or Team Richard) on which hunk Jodi “should” end up with at the final fade!

Reliable staple

With junior lead stars, Maine Mendoza and Alden Richards, out of the country until recently to shoot a film in Italy, “Eat Bulaga” has had to find a way to keep viewers watching. One of its solutions was to bring back its reliable staple, the “Pinoy Henyo” novelty quiz.

It’s turned out to be a savvy move, because the uniquely and “proudly local” pop quiz became popular anew. Indeed, the word’s out: When in doubt and in need, it’s sometimes a sound  move to dust off an old hit for another trot around the TV park.

This time around, the quiz was repacked as a “celebrity quiz” feature with three pairs of stars or starlets competing. For starters, we saw Beverly Salviejo and her partner beat the competition and win a cool P50,000 in the tilt’s jackpot round.

On the other hand, past telecasts of the celebrity quiz feature ended up badly for other ostensibly “star” players, because their decidedly unstellar limitations were made embarrassingly obvious, for viewers to gasp or giggle at.

For instance, a star was asked to identify a part of the country and made the big mistake of going city by city, instead of serially limiting the scope of the locale. Even after she had figured out that it was in Luzon, she kept shooting in the dark—and even made far-out guesses that included “Visayas!” and “Mindanao!”

Another star got stuck on a question that involved a country in Europe. After flailing around and coming up with “France” and “Germany,” he prematurely ran out of countries and waited, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, for his time to run out.

Trouble was, his failure wasn’t his alone, but also sealed the fate of one of the show’s cohosts, who had to suffer the messy ignominy of getting hit with—a cream pie flush in his flustered face!