Kabadasses

Sitcom pilot Kabadasses is not only the last Comedy Lab episode for this series, but also the last ever. It's to be replaced by a new strand called E4 Funnies, which will be shorter but the pilots will have bigger budgets.

So, was Kabadasses a glorious swansong or a damp squib to end this run? Well, it definitely started somewhat slow. There seemed little in the way of plot and the deliberately bad graphics were a bit cheesy for my liking. However, as it progressed the actual ideas began to emerge, and they themselves were rather clever.

In the pilot, two friends, Bobby (Shazad Latif) and Vin (Jack Doolan) decide to create the world's first all-white kabaddi team. This, at first, sounds rather dodgy. For starters, Bobby is Asian, although he claims to be "white inside". However, the main problem when you first hear this idea is that you tend to think: "An all white team? Isn't that rather... racist?"

The answer to that question is: "No". Because kabaddi is an Indian sport - dominated by Indians - white people are, in this case, the minority. It's a political correctness story turned on its head as far as we Brits are concerned.

The pilot, however, was open-ended, with several story lines left unfinished (we didn't even see the newly formed team play a single game of kabaddi) so the show's writers are clearly hoping that it'll get a full series.

Ian Wolf, Giggle Beats, 21st November 2011

C4 Comedy Lab plans kabaddi comedy

Channel 4's Comedy Lab will air a pilot based on the Indian sport Kabaddi later this year.

Alex Fletcher, Digital Spy, 10th February 2011