Yet another one of Star World’s Hinglish shows is Goodness Gracious Me. This airs every Sunday at 9 pm. What makes this different from Kumars at No. 42 or for that matter any other English sitcom on Indian television is that each episode has no continuous storyline. It consists of a series of parody skits. The actors Sanjeev Bhaskar, Meera Syal, Kulvinder Ghir, Nina Wadia don many hats.
The show is a case of hit and miss. The first episode hit the ball in a big way with The Accountant black and white piece. Bhaskar had me rolling on the floor with laughter doing the Humphrey Bogart thing with the cigar firmly in place. “ She was all luxury expenditure with no decent savings account,” is his neat description of a prospective client.

Also uproarious is the appearance of a Buddhist who keeps stressing the importance of not killing in a manner that would have the Buddha tossing and turning in grave distress. Pun fully intended! Explaining his plan of getting rid of rodents from a woman’s kitchen, he sits in a meditative posture and says, “ I intend to make them think again of their actions”. He produces a banyan plant to great comical effect. Apparently the mice will reach enlightenment by sitting under this mechanism and find better toilet facilities. .

Speaking of religion, Hinduism also takes a slight beating. A segment dwells with a naïve British woman visiting India to collect artefacts. The woman of the house she visits says, “ It is amazing how much our ancient Gods look like the Power Rangers.” How well this will go down with our desi audience remains to be seen. I won’t be surprised at all if Christianity and Islam come up for bashing next in the near future.

On the flip side, the 'We are Asians laughing at our behaviour’ routine doesn’t always work. The three restaurant scenes in the first episode came off as asinine as also does the very first scene involving membership to a Tennis club. In addition, the sequence in the train where an animated discussion over the need to preserve British culture takes place comes off as hurried and forced. The jokes at times are crude and insensitive. At a publishing firm, a woman of all people comes up with two topics Sex after pregnancy why bother and Spice up your marriage: Sleep with your wife. The topics imply infidelity and the fact that husband and wife sleep together just to procreate!

Having said all of that, though the cast shows admirable versatility in their roles (check out the singing sequence) and it will be interesting to see the different directions the show will take. It is not a bad way for the viewer who is patient, not too sensitive to pass time.

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