The perfect e-mail storm.

The following is a series of emails that I received on an internal mailing group at my work place today. Every email was received by hundreds of my workmates. The emails have only been anonymized and their content itself has not been edited or abridged. Everything has been reproduced as is and in the order received! (The comments in bold, prefixed by '---' are my own).

Who knew Kumars could entertain

Unable to live with the knowledge that there is a sitcom based on the "Merv Griffin Show" (Seinfeld, final season) that I haven't seen, I rented the DVD with 6 episodes of "The Kumars at No. 42" and found it startlingly interesting. Particularly, in concept! It is indeed a Punjabi family with a minor reversal of roles, a racy grandmother and typical parents. The son is basically one embarassed man very proud of his talk show hosting skills. Now, can a Punjabi family look beyond bhangra and samosas, one wonders. Turns out there's a bit of a formula in doing so. The father tells long-winded immigrant stories (the kind you hear if you go to, what I call, "green card parties" in the bay area/NJ), the son constantly nurses his ego, while not promoting it and the grandmother tells sex jokes! Of the lot, the mother is the most predictable with her constant questioning about family-oriented subjects.

Now, here's the clinching aspect that kept me engrossed for 6 episodes: the celebrities (very very prominent Brit personalitiesincluding Stephen Fry, Richard and Judy, Michael Parkinson and MinnieDriver) are not a part of the script! From the moment they enter the house, the show is a single-take extemporaneous sketch comedy. Of course, the actors do have a plan which they often execute to surprisingly good results. This has the appeal of a show like "who's line is it anyway". Of course, the humour is better since it is semi-scripted (according to one of the DVD extras, the actors conjureup different outcomes during rehearsal and have lines ready). Sometimes the humour in impromptu situations gets a trifle predictable. Amongst the actors, two of the four protagonists (son and grandmother) are writers with very sharp wit.

By and large, I'm impressed that a desi sitcom is extending the envelope using its strengths rather than blindly imitate a Western counterpart. In fact, an American imitation with a Latino family "TheOrtegas" failed miserably. I'm currently interested in a DVD of "Goodness Gracious Me", the previous creation by the same team, which was an attempt to be 'Shanivaar night live'.