"Ah, Friday night . Time to kick back and relax. Hey, The Firm is on. Corporate lawyers talking about corporate law. Great show. Tonight, Jeff Smith of Cravath Swaine & Moore is talking about SEC rules on climate change disclosure? Excellent."

That imaginary train of thought doesn't come from The Twilight Zone . It's from India, where The Firm: Corporate Law in India, airing on TV18, is all the rage.

We're not aware of another television show of its kind: a half-hour news-and-discussion program where corporate lawyers talk about the technical details of their work. And despite a steady diet of features like the examination of the public offering by India's biggest power company, the two-year-old show is the top-rated new program in its time slot.

Menaka Doshi, the show's host and editor, attributes the show's success to the relative newness of India's participation in the global deal economy. She still recalls the novelty, in 1999, of the domestic company Tata Tea Group's heavily financed acquisition of The Tetley Group. "It was the first time the term 'LBO' appeared in Indian newspapers," says Doshi. "Many people weren't sure what it meant." Since then, Tata has become a global player, and interest in the booming Indian economy has grown. That surge has been accompanied by debate about what the proper legal and regulatory environment should be. Those subjects are prime topics on the show. "Policy is not as evolved in India," says producer Isha Dalal. "There are a lot more differences of opinion on policy issues."

Comparing Indian laws and regulatory approaches with US or European models is also a staple. And big-name western lawyers, some quite press-shy at home, have eagerly obliged The Firm with appearances – sort of like Harrison Ford advertising Kirin beer in Japan.

An International Bar Association M&A conference held in Mumbai in February gave Doshi a chance to assemble a formidable western panel: Adam Emmerich of Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, Peter King of Weil Gotshal & Manges and Chris Saul (pictured) of Slaughter and May. They joined top Indian bankers to discuss the outlook for merger activity in the coming year.

Other US legal luminaries who have been on the show include former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Harvey Pitt and Harvard Law School professor David Wilkins, who turned up to discuss the future of the legal profession. One of the livelier shows aired in December, after the Bombay High Court ordered the closure of liaison offices belonging to three foreign law firms – Ashurst, Chadbourne & Parke and White & Case.

Smith, the head of Cravath's environmental practice, was contacted in New York in February. Although he had