| Genre: | Reality |
| Country: | India |
| Language: | Hindi |
| Num Seasons: | 5 |
| Num Episodes: | 193 |
| Location: | Mumbai |
| Camera: | Multi-camera |
| Runtime: | approximately 48 minutes |
| Related: | Laughter Knights |
| Company: | Endemol |
| Network: | STAR One (season 1–4) STAR Plus (season 5) |
The Great Indian Laughter Challenge is an Indian reality stand-up comedy series produced by Endemol India. The first four seasons aired on STAR One from 15 June 2005 to 26 September 2008.[1] [2] [3] The show's fifth season premiered on 30 September 2017 on STAR Plus and was judged by Akshay Kumar.[4]
The show is based on a format where stand-up comedians perform and entertain judges and the studio audience with their comedy skills. The first three seasons of the show saw Shekhar Suman, an eminent TV personality and Navjot Singh Sidhu, former cricketer, cricket color commentator and Punjab politician."[5] The show's initial episodes were hosted by Parizaad Kolah Marshall and later she was replaced by Shonali Nagrani. The fifth season is being hosted by Elli Avram. The set was designed by noted Bollywood production designer Nitin Chandrakant Desai.[6] In the fourth season, Shatrughan Sinha replaced Navjot Singh Sidhu as judge as per season.
In the first season, Sunil Pal was the winner, Ahsaan Qureshi was runner up and Raju Srivastava was second runner up. In the second season contestants from Pakistan were present and the winner Rauf Lala was from Pakistan. The third season was won by Kapil Sharma and the first runner up was Chandan Prabhakar both from Amritsar. Many other talented comedians like Siraj Khan, Sudesh Lehari, Rajiv Thakur, Bharti Singh, Navin Prabhakar, Jassi Kochar, Khayaali, Dipoo Srivastava, Ahsaan Qureshi have appeared in the show.
The first two seasons were followed by another show, The Great Indian Laughter Champions, which included top performers of the previous shows. Here also the judges were Sidhu and Shekar including some celebrity guests as well.
Recently the first woman to participate was Aarti Kandpal. The fourth season's finalists were Rasbihari Gaur, Bharti Singh, Suresh Albela, and a duo Sikander Sanam-Wali Sheikh (veteran stage comedians from Pakistan). The winner for the fourth season after a tough laughter war was Suresh Albela.
Season 5 had 3 mentors Zakir Khan, Hussain Dalal and Mallika Dua later replaced by Sajid Khan and Shreyas Talpade who along with Akshay Kumar, will select 12 finalists who will compete for the title.