Maurice Gran

Maurice Gran asks 'Who killed the sitcom?'

We adored Fawlty Towers when it hit the TV screens, even though we were working at the time on a script set in a rundown seaside hotel. It happens.

Maurice Gran, Daily Mail, 11th May 2009

Mumbai Calling was a pilot for a new sitcom. At this stage, the sit seems promising - but, if there is to be a series, it'll need to work a lot harder on the com part.

Sanjeev Bhaskar plays Kenny Gupta - who, at the start of last night's show, was working in the accounts department of a Jewish family firm in London. (The Jewish element is presumably where Bhaskar's co-writers, Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, come in.) But then the firm's patriarch, who clearly knew a thing or two about how to set up a traditional comedy plot, decided that his dim nephew and his glamorous but spoilt daughter should join Kenny in running the company's new call centre in Mumbai.

So far, the inevitable cultural clashes have been disappointingly, even lazily familiar. The daughter was surprised to discover that Mumbai is a big messy city instead of the spiritual India of her romantic imaginings. As a special treat, the dim nephew tried to serve the workers a beef dinner.

Both Mumbai and the call centre itself could yet make for an interesting and unusual sitcom setting. If so, however, the script will have to get to grips with it in a much more coherent, as well as a funnier way. At the moment, the result just feels like a slightly plodding drama with a few little (and entirely detachable) gags sprinkled on top.

James Walton, The Telegraph, 1st June 2007