About Mumbai Calling
Mumbai may not be on your doorstep, but it's certainly on the end of a phone line. Sanjeev Baskhar's comedy lifts the lid on a call centre a mere eleven taps on your phone keypad and a short 4,500 mile flight away from Blighty's cool shores. For that overdraft extension, insurance quote or fuzzy TV screen complaint, Mumbai will certainly be called.
Mumbai Calling centers on the Teknobable call center in India, where England has outsourced its mundane day-to-day problems to a team of tech-savvy university graduates. The show stars British-Indian actors Sanjeev Bhaskar and Nitin Ganatra, along with British TV actress Daisy Beaumont.
Mumbai Calling first appeared on our screens on Wednesday 30th May 2007 as a pilot sitcom on ITV1. The story was that Phillip Glass (Henry Goodman) had acquired a failing call centre in a job lot purchase, and so dispatched the reluctant Kenny Gupta (Baskhar) to take charge and turn its fortunes around. Gupta was not alone in his task, aided and abetted in equal measures, by Phillip's pampered offspring, Tiffany (Sophie Hunter) and Anthony (Andres Williams).
The trio arrived in Mumbai, with the fragrant scent of a new life, packed with possibilities, filling the air. However, the jubilant mood was immediately quashed upon arrival at the call centre's HQ. There they found Dev (Ganatra), the call centre manager who is more interested in using the phones to help fund his own numerous profitable side-lines rather than making profits for its English owners.
Following the positive reception of the pilot, ITV ordered more episodes from production company Allan McKeown Presents. However, changes were made to the series, presumably to make it easier to export abroad to other TV networks. The characters of Tiffany and Anthony were dropped in favour of a new character, Terri Johnson (Daisy Beaumont).
The full series, scripted by a 12-strong UK team, was filmed on location in Mumbai in 2008. The series features a huge Indian cast as well as guest appearances by a host of familiar British faces across the seven weeks including Richard E Grant and Dennis Lawson, Indian Superstars Lilette Dubey, Chunky Pandey and Raj Zutshi (Slumdog Millionaire) and rising star Via Das.
These seven new episodes were originally scheduled to be broadcast in a prime-time slot in ITV1's 2008 Winter Schedule, however the network changed its mind and put the episodes "on the shelf". As a result, the new episodes were first seen on HBO India in 2008 and did not appear on UK screens until the end of May 2009. The series was given the perfect launch by debuting directly after the super high-rating Britain's Got Talent final, but then ITV seemed to lose faith as the later episodes were left to clash with Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow on BBC One.
