FUNNYMAN Sanjeev Bhaskar is the first to admit his new crime series, Chopra Town, is hardly Magnum PI. ''It's about a detective called Vik Chopra, who operates in the East End of London,'' he says. ''He's not glamorous - he gets the kind of jobs that just about pay his bills. In the first episode he's employed to find a missing cow and a woman pays him to make sure her husband takes his medicine.''

Publicity for the programme compares it to classic TV shows The Rockford Files and Minder. ''I think it has the kind of lightness of touch of those programmes,'' agrees the 41-year-old, ''and what I liked about The Rockford Files in particular was he wasn't a gung-ho, heroic private investigator who was going to exorcise his demons. He was just a bloke who didn't have much money and had to look after his dad.

''Alongside that, Minder always felt quite real. They set it in bits of London that I recognised, as opposed to the picture postcard version of the city.''

So, does this mean he's the new Dennis Waterman? ''I'd rather be the new James Garner, if you're giving me a choice,'' he says.

The show has been created by Richard Pinto, Anil Gupta and Sharat Sardana, three men who've worked with Sanjeev in the past on Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars At No 42.

''We'd been talking about doing something featuring a private eye for a while now,'' he explains. ''Initially, when we were having the discussion, I was thinking, 'Do we really need another telly detective?'. There are just so many. But the more we talked about it, the more it moved away from the whole kind of, 'It's gritty, it's the underworld, it's nasty and it's rainy' kind of view.

''I would say it's a comedy-drama, but we do try to make the whole thing as real as possible. On television, the East End has kind of been defined by EastEnders, which is not an East End that I've ever really seen.

''If you drive around the area what you actually find are these little pockets of subcultures. Suddenly you're on a road which is full of Lebanese, Greek or Turkish shops, all standing together. It's something that we haven't really seen on screen before.''

Despite being best known as the hapless and arrogant star of The Kumars, Sanjeev doesn't worry that the public may find it difficult to look beyond his comedic persona.

''Whether they believe in me or not is kind of down to if I've done a good enough job, I suppose,'' he says, philosophically. ''The Kumars is only on six or eight episodes in a year anyway, so I don't think that's enough for people to completely pigeon-hole me.

''But in a way, the show is kind of like The Rockford Files meets The Kumars, so I don't think people will have that big a problem with it.''

At the beginning of December, Sanjeev and wife and fellow Kumars star Meera Syal, 44, became the proud parents of a baby boy. The pregnancy was unplanned, following the couple's secretive wedding in January, but nevertheless, both were overjoyed at the news. While Meera has a teenage daughter, Chameli, from a previous marriage, this is Sanjeev's first time at playing dad.

''I'm kind of curious as to what fatherhood is going to do to me,'' he says, before breaking into a wicked grin. ''It's certainly nice to have a child that I can exploit. It's just a shame there aren't so many chimneys now, and child labour laws are so strict.''

Joking aside, he admits he and Meera haven't discussed how they're going to juggle parenthood with their careers. ''It'll probably make itself clear, I think. I mean, there are a lot of people who manage it, so the inspiration is right there.''

One thing that will certainly keep them both busy is the prospect of a further series of The Kumars on BBC1 in 2006. ''We'll be doing another run in late spring or early summer.''

It seems the programme has fans in high places. ''I did a day on Woody Allen's last film, which was shot in London. My two scenes were with Hugh Jackman, and he knew more about The Kumars than I did. I said to him, 'Can I employ you as a biographer?' That would be so cool, having a Hollywood A-lister as my personal scribe."

Right now, though, his mind is fixed on more immediate concerns, namely Christmas.

''We'll have the usual kind of get together with the family,'' he reveals. ''My brother-in-law is a fantastic chef, so I've already exploited the baby by saying, 'Obviously, we can't cook anything, so you'll have to come around and make Christmas dinner for him. It will be his first one, so you really have to cook it'. Actually, I'm worried he's now left the country. I haven't heard from him in about a week.

''And then it's onto New Year, which for me will be like every other one I've ever celebrated. I'll spend it lying in the foetal position until the third week of January, whereupon I'll finally get up and make myself a cup of tea. It's an old tradition.''

* Chopra Town, BBC1 tonight 9pm.