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.
