GRANNY Kumar is back! A lockdown treat if ever there was one – the country’s most famous Asian grandmother has taken her microphone and set up shop on Radio 4 in Gossip and Goddesses with Granny Kumar.
Meera Syal’s alter comedy ego first seen in The Kumars at No.42 has returned – minus Sanjeev (played by Sanjeev Bhasker her husband) and the rest of the cast.
They, it said, have been “stuck in quarantine on a world cruise”, as granny wants to do her own thing and fancies talking to guests who are not “male, pale and stale”.
Syal is now flanked on the six-episode first series – which started in February this year – by frenemy Geeta (Harvey Virdi) and great-granddaughter Maya (Ambreen Razia). It is a female only space now. Guests have included broadcaster Samira Ahmed, actress Thandie Newton, scientist Maggie Ebunoluwa Aderin-Pocock, broadcaster and comedian Ayesha Hazarika, BBC presenter Anita Rani, writer and journalist Anita Anand, musician Anoushka Shankar.
More recently, Syal was the subject of this publisher and Southampton University’s inaugural fireside chat Pioneers Project, which will see the Asian Media Group – inspired by its founder and former editor-in-chief Ramniklal Solanki CBE, who died in March 2020 – team up with the university to identify 100 Pioneers from the Asian community.
The idea is to better document and detail those who have made significant contributions to their new country as immigrants down the years – in memory of the rich legacy and those like it bequeathed by Solanki senior who died aged 88.
Speaking to Eastern Eye’s editor-at-large Barnie Choudhury, Syal said too many executives were blindly led by quotas and tick-box diversity and it wasn’t helping anyone.
“People think diversity is a headcount and you switch on your television and go ‘well, there’s one and there’s one, I mean, they’re all over the place, they’re even in adverts now for God’s sake’. But that’s actually superficial headcounts.”
She said audiences are smart but most of the industry hasn’t caught up and is still stuck in a time-warp and just not particularly bothered about diversity. Mostly, they are just paying lip service to the idea, she felt.
“I feel we have so many untold stories that haven’t been told before, then I do feel the quota system comes in.
“So many times have I heard – we have something similar, which doesn’t mean we have something that is exactly the same idea as yours, it just means we have something with brown people in it, and we can’t have both things at the same time. That makes me crazy mad.”
She said a way out is being offered by the US where some women of colour have just taken it upon themselves to make creative work themselves. They – like Shonda Rhimes or Oprah Winfrey – have the resources to do it and do not need to ask anyone.
“The broadcasters then say, oh yes, that does work, so now come in with us.”
Syal, it perhaps goes without saying, is the most prominent creative from an Asian background to have emerged in recent times.
She is not only one of the most recognisable faces in the entertainment space but her talent as an actor, performer, and writer are well charted and widely celebrated, whether it be on the stage, in film – or writing novels or screen tales. She was presented with a CBE in 2015. Her significant breakthrough was in the iconic Goodness Gracious Me (GGM) BBC sketch show. It started on radio then graduated to television and remains one of the most loved and cherished comedy sketch shows of the last century, finishing in 2001. Few people of south Asian heritage anywhere in the world are unaware of it – no comedy programme has so successfully mined the south Asian mindset in the West in all its beauty and absurdities.
Syal’s destiny was, perhaps, writ large when she won an award for a student show at the Edinburgh International Festival and secured a contract with the Royal Court off the back of it.
This too after obtaining a double first in English and drama from Manchester University.
She penned the screenplay for Bhaji on the Beach (1993) – with Gurinder Chadha who directed, and has written three novels of which two have been adapted for the screen in addition – the semi-autobiographical Anita and Me (1996) – and today you will find this on school syllabuses and Life isn’t all Ha Ha Hee (1999). Her most recent novel is The House of Hidden Mothers (2015).
Her husband Bhaskar was back on TV in the much loved and critically appraised Unforgotten, playing Detective Inspector Sunny Khan. Now in its fourth series, the intrepid detective coupling – of Bhasker and Bafta nominated Nicola Walker – investigate long forgotten murders that have gone ‘cold’, in the jargon. It was filmed in September last year under Covid regulations.
Chris Lang, creator of the series said before its return in February that he was delighted to have brought together an “astonishing cast”.
ITV added: “Unforgotten has gone from strength to strength since its first outing in 2015, proving hugely popular with viewers and critics alike. The series has received two Bafta wins and a further nomination for its compelling performances.”
Warm and often self-deprecating, Bhasker revealed in an interview in The Times he was in some ways living out his boyhood fantasies of hob-knobbing with successful artists.
A big fan of Monty Python, he is friends with Michael Palin, Eric Idle and Terry Jones. He has also appeared in a Terry Gilliam (another of the original comedy gang) film – The Zero Theorem (2013). He also got to become friends with the 1970s 007 Roger Moore and has met three of the Beatles.
Perhaps poignantly for Bhasker, the couple (with Syal) played parents to Himesh Patel in Richard Curtis’s summer film smash in 2019, Yesterday – in which Patel plays a musician who is the only person to know and be able to play Beatles’ tracks.
Bhasker, it was reported more recently is filming for The Sandman. A new Netflix drama based on cult author Neil Gaiman’s comic book series of the same name.
It’s a starry cast and Gaiman’s fans of which there are many around the world, are eagerly awaiting news of when the series will drop on the streaming platform. It has Gaiman’s trademark intelligence and complexity – with the central character called Dream and Morpheus, and is about myths and power.
Bhasker started out creatively as a stand-up in a double act with friend and musician Nitin Sawhney, when he was spotted by BBC producer Anil Gupta who went onto make GGM.
Bhasker had spent seven years as an IBM marketing executive, before a contractual issue and a legal dispute left him with more time to devote to creative pursuits.
He had always enjoyed performing and making people laugh but the expectations of his factory-working father were a bit different. The five-year-old Bhasker expressed an ambition to be an actor – his father, he reported, heard doctor.
Bhasker met Syal on GGM, married in 2005 and have a teenage son, Shaan. Syal also has a grownup daughter who is a fast-rising theatre director Milli, whose father and to whom Syal was married, is award-winning journalist Shekhar Bhatia. Recently, Syal and Bhasker fronted a Covid vaccination programme video message to counter misinformation circulating in the Asian community.
