Citizen Khan

Citizen Khan: who was offended by it, and why?

The Muslim sitcom supposedly generated a lot of controversy - but do bloggers and tweeters represent all viewers?

Citizen Khan is the BBC's latest sitcom, and features the adventures of the opinionated, self-appointed community leader Mr Khan (Adil Ray). It's about time the Pakistani community in the "capital of British Pakistan" got some quality exposure and some laughs.

On the basis of this first episode, sadly they'll have to wait. Generalisations about house-proud culture, obsessive business ideology, tight-fisted patriarchs, and even honour killings? I thought comedy was beyond cheap gags and stereotypes these days.

Citizen Khan prompts 185 complaints to the BBC

The BBC has been accused of stereotyping Muslims in its new sitcom, Citizen Khan.

Citizen Khan is not just outdated, but lazy & offensive

Is Citizen Khan offensive? Yes, and not because of its treatment of religion but because it patronises its audience by flogging dead jokes and dumb stereotypes.

Offensive? Racist? No, just funny - and oh so true!

Adil Ray should get full marks for using his childhood and life experiences to such tremendous comic effect.

Compaired to Hunderby, Citizen Khan (BBC1) looks very un-bold indeed. It's a family based sitcom that feels like it's from about 1983. You know, Mr Khan parks in a disabled space, someone sees him getting out of the car, so he adopts a limp, cue laughter. The fact that the parking space is at the mosque doesn't make it any more interesting I'm afraid - perhaps even highlights what a pity it is that the BBC's first Asian sitcom is so safe.

Oh, it's not that bad, I suppose. Adil Ray's performance is spirited. There are some nice touches, like the plastic sofa covers. But even the best joke - Mr Khan's imaginative speechifying (JFK, MLK, TJ*) being broadcast from the speaker at the top of the minaret - you can see coming a mile off, as soon as he picks up the mic. It seems for interesting original comedy you now have to look to the right of the first three columns in the listings page.

*Tom Jones.

I had seen the hat before, I was sure of it. Mr Khan's, that is, from Citizen Khan. So I Googled it and sure enough, it was the very same hat worn by the Asian man in Mind Your Language - not the one with the turban but the other one who smiled unctuously and shook his head from side to side every time he spoke. Mr Khan didn't shake his head in the same way, but he may as well have done, and he certainly wore the same hat, which must have been gathering dust in ITV's costume cupboard since the late 1970s, before being taken up now, three decades later, by the BBC.

In fact, the whole show seemed like it was stuck in a 1970s time warp. If the BBC's billing of it as the channel's first British Muslim comedy series had intended to give it some edge, this first episode quickly dispelled the spin. There was even a mention of Mr Mainwaring, from Dad's Army. Perhaps the point was that Mr Khan, a pompous community leader from Sparkhill, in Birmingham, was stuck in the past, but did this mean the jokes had to be too?

It's not to say that it was bad comedy, it just wasn't new. The straight-faced homage to sepia-tinted shows was all too transparent. In a scene in which a rotund, lusty woman called Mrs Bilal cornered the quivering Mr Khan in an office, it looked as if she had been directed to play Hattie Jacques (in a headscarf) to his (multicultural) Kenneth Williams. The smutty last line, as Mr Khan bundled her into his car - "Mrs Bilal, get your hand off my gearstick" - might just as well have been written by the scriptwriter for Are You Being Served?.

There were small moments of originality, but sadly, these were just flashes (the British convert, Dave; the Somali man whose accent Mr Khan couldn't understand - "what's he saying?"); and the odd topical joke - after watching News at Ten, Mr Khan proudly announced: "Pakistan was mentioned seven times... two in a good way."

The characters - Mr Khan, his long-suffering wife, his favourite daughter, who donned a headscarf every time he came in the room but was secretly a party girl, and his other daughter, who was preparing for her Big Fat Asian wedding - were such clichés that they may as well have been dragged out of the same dusty costume cupboard as the hat. How far has this come since Goodness Gracious Me? Not far at all. How much more contemporary is it than East Is East, or Bend It Like Beckham? Less so. How much funnier? Same answer.

To help the audience figure out that this was a PAKISTANI family who acted in a very PAKISTANI way, there were PAKISTANI flags on every window. Mr Khan was a tight-fisted old sod who bought mountains of cheap toilet rolls from the Cash & Carry and watered down the washing-up liquid because he was PAKISTANI. Mrs Khan wiped down the plastic cover on the sofa to keep it looking new because she was PAKISTANI. And they were having a wedding in the local mosque because they were all PAKISTANI. Comedy doesn't have a duty to represent real people, but it does need to be funny, and while a family comedy requires a broad appeal, this is no reason to unspool recycled jokes that worked a treat 40 years ago.

Last night's viewing - Citizen Khan; Hunderby

Reviews of Citizen Khan and Hunderby.

Citizen Khan - Episode 1.1 review

I thought it was okay but I'm not going to rave about it.