Isn’t culture-clash funny? It seems NBC is banking on it as their new comedy series Outsourced follows a group of Indian sales reps as they attempt to sell novelty items to Americans over the phone.
Based on Outsourced's premise and the clips (below), I’m thinking this series could go either way. It could end up being silly and sort of overly sitcom-ish in an obvious and dated kind of way or it could be another fantastic workplace comedy to fit in among NBC’s Thursday night lineup. We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, here’s NBC’s description:
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.
Outsourced premieres Thursday, September 23rd (9:30-10 p.m. ET) on NBC.
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