Amazon.co.uk Review
Fed up with the call centre culture? Increasingly agitated that more and more companies are outsourcing the handling of your telephone complaints to India? Then
Mumbai Calling could be just the antidote you’re looking for, ITV’s hit sitcom that aims to poke fun at the culture of globalisation. It stars Sanjeev Bhaskar as Kenny, an Indian man sent to Mumbai to set up one of the aforementioned call centres. Joining him for the journey, with a case of by-the-numbers gender confusion thrown in, is Terri Johnson, who turns out to be female rather than male, played by Daisy Beaumont. The pair, to an extent, go through the usual sitcom routine, but don’t write
Mumbai Calling off so easily. It has a big factor in its favour. And that’s that it’s often quite funny.
Mumbai Calling is at its finest with some of the marvellous telephone conversations we get to hear one half of, which in turn throw the limelight on the supporting players. It’s they who mine the most humour from the situation, and credit should also be given for luring the peerless Richard E Grant in for a cameo. He’s on fun form as ever.
Mumbai Calling has its fair share of problems, and a tighter script would surely work wonders. But there’s promise and potential here, and some decent chuckles too. For the first series of a British mainstream sitcom, that shouldn’t be overlooked. A second series could happily iron some of the creases out. --
Jon Foster
Synopsis
Kenny is an ambitious Londoner of Indian descent. When he is sent to Mumbai to help manage a call centre in disastrous conditions, he is brought face to face with his cultural origins. But the time to contemplate existential questions isnt really enough as Kenny has to solve the myriad problems Dev, the call centre playboy manager, has already caused. Things seem to worsen when an attractive and extremely picky supervisor is sent over all the way from London. Features the all the episodes from the first series of the show.