New Sit-com

Have you seen the new sit-com Outsourced? It is based at a call center in India. I think everyone in the world has talked to a call center worker in India, so they are trying to tap into a common experience that holds some mystery for most Americans. It is interesting to see Anglo-American and Indian actors together playing what would be recognizable and classic comedic office characters in any culture.

Last week there was a bit about Indian head bobbing that was cute - if you're familiar with Indian cultural tics like that. The writers must have thought the audience was familiar enough with that head gesture to find it intriguing and worthy of some humor.

The program is obviously recorded in a studio as no bazaar in India is as clean or quiet as the one shown in this half hour program. So from that point of view, it is not very authentic. But you have to give someone at NBC credit for thinking this might go over with the public and advertisers would buy some time on it.

Outsourced is shown on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. eastern time on an NBC station. Check it out and tell us what you think..

Here's the Web site for the program: http://www.nbc.com/outsourced/

And here's the official description of the program from the Web site:

"Outsourced" is NBC's new workplace comedy series centered around a catalog-based company, Mid America Novelties, that sells American novelty goods including whoopee cushions, foam fingers and wallets made of bacon, and whose call center has suddenly been outsourced to India.

After recently completing Mid America Novelties' manager training program, Todd Dempsy (Ben Rappaport, off-Broadway's "The Gingerbread House") learns that the call center is being outsourced to India, and he is asked to move there to be the manager. Having never ventured out of the country, he is unprepared for the culture shock. Overwhelmed, Todd discovers that his new staff needs a crash course in all things American if they are to understand the U.S. product line and ramp up sales from halfway around the world.

The sales team Todd inherits includes Gupta (Parvesh Cheena, "Help Me Help You"), a socially awkward employee; Manmeet (Sacha Dhawan, BBC's "Five Days II"), a young romantic who is enamored with America; Asha (Rebecca Hazlewood, BBC's "Doctors"), a smart, striking woman who finds herself intrigued by Todd; Rajiv (Rizwan Manji, "Privileged") the assistant manager who wants Todd's job; and Madhuri (Anisha Nagarajan, Broadway's "Bombay Dreams"), a wallflower who suffers from extreme shyness.

Todd also discovers other transplants working in his office building, including an American expatriate, Charlie Davies (Diedrich Bader, "The Drew Carey Show"), who runs the All-American Hunter call center, and Tonya (Pippa Black, "Neighbours"), a beautiful Australian who runs the call center for Koala Air.

From Universal Media Studios, "Outsourced" is executive produced by showrunner Robert Borden ("The Drew Carey Show," "George Lopez") and director Ken Kwapis ("He's Just Not That Into You," "The Office"), who developed the project through his company, In Cahoots. Victor Nelli, Jr. ("Ugly Betty"), Tom Gorai ("Outsourced" theatrical release) and David Skinner ("Outsourced" theatrical release) also serve as executive producers, and Alex Beattie serves as co-executive producer. More »