Sanjeev Bhaskar

Sanjeev Bhaskar: It was weird marrying my 'grandmother'

After a six-year absence, The Kumars at No. 42 returns to our screens in 2013. Now, its host, Sanjeev Bhaskar, is married to Meera Syal, who plays his grandmother in the popular BBC comedy series.

Diversity in comedy - whether stand-up or sitcom - is taken for granted nowadays, but the first part of Meera Syal's Asian Comedy Story provided a reminder that racial stereotypes were a regular feature of popular mainstream entertainment only 30 or so years ago.

There are those who would argue that TV shows such as Mind Your Language and It Ain't Half Hot Mum were of their time, but Syal and her peers were left feeling that Asians were being laughed at, not laughed with.

The comedian, writer and actress may not have had anything particularly revelatory to say, but her reflections on how the British Asian comedy scene developed still made for entertaining and informative listening.

Of particular significance was the 1979 anti-racist uprising in London's Southall, which resulted in the Asian community having more of a voice, both politically and culturally. Gradually, opportunities arose for a new generation to offer their own style of multicultural satire. Indeed, Watermans Arts Centre in Brentford became something of a home for Asian comedy, as a host of artists, including Sanjeev Bhaskar and musician Nitin Sawhney, regularly performed there.

Bhaskar pointed out that the same ethos behind a lot of this comedy - to "let our politics inform our comedy, rather than our comedy inform our politics" - also inspired the sketch writing for the radio and TV versions of Goodness Gracious Me, featuring the talents of Syal, Bhaskar, Kulvinder Ghir and Nina Wadia. This old-fashioned variety show with an Asian spin was a big hit, attracting a mainstream audience who simply appreciated the project for being original and funny.

Like many television comedies past and present, Goodness Gracious Me began its journey on radio before making the move to TV. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1996 and, while some of the material might now seem out of date, a good deal of the writing stands the test of time.

Unfortunately, the same quality cannot be found in many of the current radio comedy shows that pop up on a weekly basis, penned by writers who seem to underestimate the skills required to create a decent sketch show.

Sanjeev Bhaskar: This week I'm...

The Goodness Gracious Me actor reveals what his week has in store.

The Indian Doctor and its cracking 1960s soundtrack

Firstly a massive and humble thank you to all those who watched series one of The Indian Doctor. With just under two million viewers and a couple of awards, it far exceeded all our expectations and the reception enabled us to get together to make series two.

Sanjeev Bhaskar: Educate racists, not punish them

Sanjeev Bhaskar believes it is time to stop punishing footballers accused of racism - and to start educating them instead.

In The Indian Doctor, BBC1's returning daytime drama Sanjeev Bhaskar plays a GP from the Commonwealth who, like many in the early 1960s, answered a call - from Enoch Powell, the then Health Minister, no less - to work for their former colonisers in the NHS. The doc and his wife have so far been welcomed by their neighbours in the small Welsh village and everybody's rubbing along marvellously with no unpleasant imperial grudges being held.

That is, until the doctor's mother-in-law arrives to live with them. As this is the kind of mildly comic throwback series in which mothers-in-law are all battleaxes, Indira Joshi's Pushpa immediately throws her weight around and causes a stir.

It's all terribly predictable and perfectly suited to anyone in a position to half-watch while indulging in an afternoon nap (of course these days, iPlayer means that daytime programmes needn't be confined to their timeslots, but it's my bet that if someone were shown this blind, they'd still guess it was made for afternoons).

Still, there's something quietly radical about its unobtrusive theme of different ethnicities mostly getting along and this time the series features an interesting based-on-true-events story about a real smallpox outbreak in South Wales, which led to mass emergency vaccinations and quarantine.

Call the Midwife may have finished for now, but the combination of nostalgia and medicine remains potent. Award-winning drama The Indian Doctor, set in the south Wales valleys in 1964, is on a smaller scale: as the village GP, Dr Sharma (Sanjeev Bhaskar) seems to be responsible for everything from eye tests to pastoral youth care and advice on romance, and is supported almost every step of the way by his wife Kamini (Ayesha Dharker).

The new series opens with his mother-in-law Pushpa (Indira Joshi) arriving from a smallpox-stricken India and, in a piece of casting that should reap comedic rewards, Mark Heap is settling in as the very serious new vicar.

The Indian Doctor is returning to BBC One

A record number of you (well over 400) posted your appreciation on Sanjeev Bhaskar's post on this blog for our recent daytime drama The Indian Doctor, so I'm absolutely delighted to tell you first that I have just recommissioned it for a second series.