Mumbai calling

BIRDS Of A Feather meets The Kumars in ITV1's latest attempt to find a hit comedy series. As the pilot show lasts just 22 minutes, it's difficult judging if this sit-com set in an Indian call centre has the potential to merit a series.

It's not cringe-makingly awful, so there's hope. I'd suggest ITV give the go-ahead. They might just have another hit like Benidorm on their hands.

Its writing pedigree is excellent, teaming Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, responsible for Birds Of A Feather, Shine On Harvey Moon and Goodnight Sweetheart among many, with The Kumars' Sanjeev Bhaskar.

Bhaskar plays Kenny Gupta, a lowly accounts worker inexplicably promoted to running a call centre in Mumbai that's been acquired in a job lot by tycoon Philip Glass (Henry Goodman).

To help, he has Glass's stupid son Anthony (Andres Williams) and his posh daughter Tiffany (Sophie Hunter), who both have a lot to prove to their father.

The call centre is being run by Nitrin Ganatra's schemer, who's using it to run his own businesses on the side. "You're on time, so I wasn't expecting you," he says, as his new bosses arrive.

Even more surprising is the ending that finds, as Gupta puts it, "two Jews and a heathen serving Christmas dinner in Mumbai in March".

The Indian setting adds to the cross-culture comic confusion, there are some funny lines and pleasing performances that resist tipping over into caricature. Glass's order to Gupta is "to stay put until it makes some money". It could well prove profitable for ITV in the ratings.

The feuding mother and four daughters seeking help in Families At War clearly need assistance in overcoming their emotional problems. I'm just not sure doing it with TV cameras following every confession over three days of "conflict resolution and therapy" is the best way of doing it.

Rarely on a reality show have I felt that I shouldn't have been watching, that this is far too private to be exposed to millions of strangers in the name of entertainment.

Then, when one daughter will only talk about a particular problem off-camera, I feel cheated, as if I had some right to hear her darkest secret. But they've signed a contract with the viewer to air their dirty washing and have lost the right to hold back.

The family has chosen to air issues such as sexual abuse, drug-taking, cot death and the young death through cancer. Why stop there? What's so terrible that Tracey can't discuss it on-camera?

We never find out during the tear-filled discussions led by Trisha Goddard, whose contribution is to listen to the family's problems.

She reaches the not-too-surprising conclusion that there is "so much anger and guilt and frustration" that "there's so much work to be done with this family". And only three days to do it at an isolated Norfolk retreat.

The bulk of the therapy is done by Jamil Qureshi and Andy Duncan who apply "a powerful mix of hypnosis and psychotherapy". This involves cutting pictures out of magazines to reflect their mood, a confidence-building exercise with mirrors, and writing grievances in the sand to see them washed away by the tide.

After what the narrator describes as "a day of pain, emotion and unresolved issues" - which sounds like a normal day in the office to me - we learn that two of Gwen's children grew up in care, one died in his twenties, and that she'd slept with her husband the same night that he abused her daughter.

Even a meal at the Norfolk retreat doesn't go smoothly. An argument between two sisters ends with one storming out. "Well, at least she walked away and didn't get to fisticuffs," observes a third sister. Now that's what I call progress.