Well, this is an odd one! Beloved British sitcom/chat show ‘The Kumars’ could be making a return to TV, but interestingly, the pilot has been ordered by US network FOX.
According to reports, FOX has ordered a “presentation” for ‘Meet The Kumars’, a followup to the award-winning BBC series ‘The Kumars At No. 42’. The pilot, which is due to be filmed in March at BBC Elstree Studios, will see original stars Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal and Vincent Ebrahim reprise their characters, alongside Shaheen Khan, who joins the show as Sandjeev’s new stepmother, Rani.
We all remember the Kumars and their only son Sanjeev’s dreams of being a famous chat show host. How his obliging parents bulldozed the garden at their modest family home to build him a TV studio and make his dreams come true, whilst also (along with his unconventional grandmother) insisting on embarrassing him in front of every guest. Yet over the years, the great and the good from the worlds of stage, screen and sport flocked to be on The Kumars’ show. And now, the mischievous family has returned! A little older, more experienced but none the wiser.
“I think the storytelling with this hybrid format is so unique, and it’s something that the original team, with Sanjeev, Meera and Hat Trick, they had a vision for how to do this show,” commented Michael Thorn, Fox Entertainment’s President, Scripted Programming, to Deadline, who broke the news. “What usually works is supporting the vision and allowing that vision to come through as specifically as strongly as possible as opposed to having someone else adapt their show because the only version that’s really resonated for people was the original. So our instinct was, rather than try to get someone to replicate their magic, go to the source and let this brilliant team do it themselves. They have a very simple and specific way to capture the original magic but also feel like it will play for a US domestic audience in a way that feels surprising and, hopefully, on-point for a Fox viewer.”
Hat Trick Productions, which was behind the original series, serves as the studio for the pilot, with managing director Jimmy Mulville executive producing alongside Sarah Fraser, Bhaskar and Syal.
‘Meet The Kumars’ is currently only a pilot, and will air on FOX in the USA if it gets picked up to series. It’s unclear if the BBC will pick it up here, or it would go somewhere else. We’ll let you know if we here more.
