Crossing the comic divide

You know you’re not watching a typical talk show when the host’s father, who is sitting on the other side of guest Patrick Stewart, pipes in with a too-personal question -- say, how much the actor earned last year.

Welcome to the world of “The Kumars at No. 42,” the British TV show that’s been a hit on four continents and will get a chance at a fifth when it debuts on BBC America next Sunday. It’s the brainchild of Sanjeev Bhaskar, who created the show and stars as Sanjeev Kumar. The show is a hybrid of a traditional family sitcom and a talk show, partly scripted but mostly improvised, and featuring an ever-changing cast of real-life celebrities.

It’s a package that seems perfect for the current tastes of the American TV audience -- so why did an Americanized version called “The Ortegas” crash and burn through two networks last year, while “The Kumars” has run for five successful seasons on Britain’s BBC2?

The answer has to do not only with the intangible qualities that make a hit but also with the kind of slow nurturing an offbeat show like “The Kumars” can receive in Britain but that’s increasingly out of the question on American network TV. While you might be able to buy a British phenomenon such as “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and successfully translate it to American TV right away, “The Kumars” concept is more like a French cheese not designed to survive the pasteurization process.

“The Kumars” certainly doesn’t fit into easy categories. Bhaskar plays a talk show host wannabe who still lives at home with his mother, Madhuri (Indira Joshi); his father, Ashwin (Vincent Ebrahim); and frisky granny Sushila (Meera Syal). The parents have bulldozed the backyard of their North London home to build an ersatz TV studio in which Sanjeev hosts his show, in front of a live audience.

Each episode features a couple of celebrities, who meet with the family for some lively discussion in the home’s entry hall, then enter the studio. Sanjeev hosts, but his parents and grandmother sit just a few feet away, chiming in, critiquing him and heaping praise, and Indian food, on the guests.

In the second episode BBC America will be showing (it aired on the BBC in January ‘03), granny swoons over guest Donny Osmond -- grilling him about the tearaway cloth he wore when he starred in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and later snapping a photo of the singer’s backside -- to the utter embarrassment of Sanjeev. The British boy band Westlife, meanwhile, comes in for a very freewheeling interview before being hit up by Ashwin to audition to become the house band for his son’s show.

It’s easy to see why the show’s been a hit across Europe, Asia, South Africa and Australia. The episodes tap into the specifics of British immigrant culture, as well as the universal themes of sons and parents, in fresh and unpredictable ways. “Everyone has been deeply embarrassed by their family on occasions,” notes Syal, who’s only 40 but convincingly plays someone twice her age.

Bhaskar, 40, a former marketing executive who didn’t begin acting until his 30s, says his own parents regularly provide material for the show. Take, for example, when one of the stars of Tim Burton’s “Planet of the Apes” was on the Kumars’ couch in 2002. Bhaskar’s parents visited the set that day, as they normally do, and Bhaskar introduced her to his mother.

“I said, ‘Mum, this is Helena Bonham Carter.’ Mum said, ‘You’re such a pretty girl. It’s a shame they forced you to wear a monkey mask in your last film.’ ”

The original trails the offshoot

But will “The Kumars” play in Pacoima? It’s a pertinent question, because the show’s concept has been tried here before, with disheartening results.

“The Ortegas,” the Americanized version set in Southern California that starred Cheech Marin in the father role and comedian Al Madrigal as his son, was scheduled for Fox’s fall lineup in the 2003-04 season. In place of the strictly British celebrities on “The Kumars” -- it’s unlikely many Americans will recognize Michael Parkinson, a guest on the first episode of the show, although he’s the British equivalent of Larry King -- were familiar faces such as actress Denise Richards and then-Laker Shaquille O’Neal. It never got on the air.

Fox lost faith in the show during production of the first handful of episodes and erased it from the fall lineup.

“When you’re talking about the people who said ‘Luis’ and ‘A Minute With Stan Hooper’ were the viable comedies but said no to ‘The Ortegas,’ it’s not hard to extrapolate that they could say no to the wrong things,” says “Ortegas” producer Gavin Polone -- who has lost absolutely none of his bitterness in the intervening 12 months -- referring to two Fox comedies that did air, briefly, in the 2003-04 season. “I feel very confident it would’ve worked and found an audience.”

Fox executives would not respond to Polone’s comments, but they haven’t formally killed the show -- stuck it in a deepfreeze is more like it.

But for the people who are bringing “The Kumars” here, the abortive history of “The Ortegas” isn’t necessarily a problem. With the recent record of hit British shows such as “Coupling” crashing once they were transferred across the Atlantic, the lower profile of BBC America may be just the thing for “The Kumars.”

“Trying to translate an English comedy is a tricky thing to do,” notes Jimmy Mulville, of Britain’s Hat Trick Productions, an executive producer on “The Kumars.” “We’d like Americans to see the show as we made it, so we’re really happy.”

In fact, it may have been a mistake to go directly to a major network to remake a show as unusual as “The Kumars,” suggests Colin Jarvis, the London-based executive who oversees the sale of BBC shows in foreign markets (although he didn’t handle “The Kumars” sale; that was handled by Hat Trick).

The BBC, he notes, has smaller channels that are the more experimental, more risk-friendly cousins of BBC1, where shows can be tried out under less pressure to attract a broad audience.

The closest equivalent in the U.S. might be cable’s FX, home to critical favorites such as “Nip/Tuck” and “Rescue Me” that wouldn’t necessarily draw audiences big enough for Fox.

“On the BBC, a sitcom can start on BBC3, transfer to BBC2 and then wind up on BBC1,” Jarvis says. “ ‘Ab Fab’ was a BBC2 show. ‘Coupling’ was a BBC2 show. ‘The Office’ was a BBC2 show.”

Sure enough, “The Kumars” has aired on BBC2 too.

And with BBC America, Jarvis says, the more adventurous comedies get a chance to grow here too. Previously, the main outlet for British shows here was syndication on PBS, which was interested only when a show reached at least 30 episodes, far more than “The Office” produced in its run.

“With ‘Coupling’ and ‘The Office,’ BBC America means the professional media is seeing them,” Jarvis says. “And that’s sort of rejuvenated the interest in the [British] sitcoms, which we haven’t seen since the late ‘70s.”

As Bhaskar notes, “In terms of comedy, there are so few that travel in their entirety to the States. There was ‘Monty Python’ and ‘Fawlty Towers,’ but I’m hard pushed to think of any others.”

So maybe it was asking too much to try to translate a show as unusual as the “The Kumars at No. 42” to the high-commerce demands of U.S. network TV. Indeed, NBC first acquired the format with plans for an American version, and when it decided it couldn’t make the premise work it let its option go. Fox then stepped in.

It was during this process that Mulville received a crucial piece of advice, which he admits he ignored.

“We went to the WB as well, and [former network co-chief executive] Jordan Levin said to me, ‘They’ll all try to make you have them be Hispanic, but I’d keep it Indian. There are already lots of shows set in the Hispanic community. This is more quirky, but they’ll convince you it should be Spanish.’ ”

Riding another trend

In retrospect, Levin’s advice seems obvious. The breakout movie success “Bend It Like Beckham,” director Mira Nair’s new version of Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” and the musical “Bombay Dreams,” which opened on Broadway in April, prove Indian culture has been seeping steadily into the American pop culture sensibility.

“Bombay Dreams,” in fact, was co-written by Syal, who had earlier success on British TV with the Indian-themed sketch comedy show “Goodness Gracious Me,” which gave Bhaskar his big break too.

Bhaskar and Syal are part of the first generation of Indian artists whose parents migrated to Britain in a huge wave starting in the 1950s and ‘60s. “You never belong anywhere, which is a very creative place to be,” Syal says.

Syal says she channels her own feisty grandmothers for the role of Sushila. “The expectation and cliche of an old Indian woman is that she’s the most invisible woman in the world, walking 10 paces behind her husband,” Syal says. “The old ones I met, particularly the widows, were raucous and cheeky.... Widowhood was the first time no one relied on them -- that’s why they turned out to be so naughty.”

But she’s also a bit concerned about being mistaken for one of those older widows. “I’m thinking that next to my granny headshot there should be a topless shot of me, just so people know what I really look like.”

The large, geographically diverse Indian population has been useful to the show too. “All the Indians in Canada have seen it,” Syal says, adding that “there’s an amazing black market” for videos of the show.

Bhaskar notes that India itself is among the show’s global markets. He recalls a phone call with his cousin, who works in the television business there.

“He said to me, ‘I have some terrible news,’ ” Bhaskar says, shedding his posh British accent and replacing it with his cousin’s Indian accent. “ ‘Your show is doing terribly here. It’s only seen by 40 to 50 million people.’ ”