【Martial arts Archives】

Holiday quality time with the family can Martial arts Archivesbe stressful even at the best of times, and TV has always been a welcome escape. Finding something everyone can watch is its own anxiety, but it's more than likely I'm going to spend Thanksgiving watching -- ahem, re-watching -- Brown Nationwith my parents.

Released Nov. 18 on Netflix, Brown Nationcenters on Hasmukh (Rajeev Varma) and Dimple (Shenaz Treasurywala), a married couple living in Queens with Dimple’s eccentric father (Kapil Bawa). While his wife chases dreams of artistry and stardom, Hasmukh runs a small startup and often gets roped into questionable side projects with his friend Hyder (Remy Munasifi).

"We shot late 2014, and we were really pitching it out to Indian TV and lot of networks," director Abi Varghese tells Mashable. "But we were stuck somewhere because we didn’t know where the audience was. It was too American for the Indian audience and vice versa. It’s only when Netflix approached us that we were really like 'Man, this is the platform where it’ll get to the right audience.'"

---

You May Also Like

---

---

SEE ALSO: Why an Emmy for ‘Master of None’ feels like a personal victory for millions

It takes a couple episodes to figure out Brown Nation's style and sense of humor, but once you understand and accept it, there's a quiet brilliance to the slow-burn humor and scenes that delicately teeter between parody and sincerity. At least one of my watch-mates couldn't wrap his mind around it, the same way Documentary Now!stumped a friend of mine several months ago.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

It’s important to note that the main characters Indian, not Indian-American. And that is a fine distinction. Half the characters speak with thick, glorious Indian accents (including lifelong Californian Omi Vaidya and the New Zealand-born Varma).

By contrast, there wasn’t one authentic accent to be found on NBC's Outsourced, which had an American and British cast. That might fool the average viewer, but Hollywood can and should aim higher; don’t fool the novice -- fool the expert.

What’s extra smart about Brown Nationis that it isn’t Culture 101. There are snatches of regional Indian languages. There's talk of arranged marriage and tense family relations, but handled with a key ingredient: nuance.

Mashable Top Stories Stay connected with the hottest stories of the day and the latest entertainment news. Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

It's not an Indian comedy so much as a comedy aboutIndians.

You won't get background if you don't know Salman Khan or R. Madhavan (an extra deep cut because his film Three Idiotsalso stars Vaidya). The show assumes an intelligent or at least inquisitive audience. When Dimple gets an acting agent, she asks him about Karan Johar — a name that means nothing to the average Netflix viewer, but her delivery alone will tell the astute that he’s a big deal.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

There are no heavy-handed issues like religion or caste (which was casually and inappropriately forced into NBC's Outsourced pilot), but an enjoyable in-joke about the testy relations between different regions of India -- Hasmukh is from Gujarat and Dimple from Punjab, which provides some laughs in their interactions and with their family members later on.

"We just kind of based it on our lives," Varghese says, referring to his fellow writers George Kanatt and Matt Grubb. "We were doing a smaller business with our production company, so we dealt with all these little things that makes it so hard for a small company to survive."

"And also me, George and Matt, we went through all these relationship ups and downs and getting married," Varghese adds. "So all that stuff comes into play as well; we try to kind of base it on our lives and the friends that we have, the in-laws and also the outer world that we deal with in New York."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

And take a moment to appreciate character names like Hasmukh, Balan and Gautam; real Indian names to counter the brown people on TV named Alex or Mindy or Cece. Varghese and his team picked typical names from different regions of India, most of which are shared by people he knows.

Earlier this year, Priyanka Chopra brushed off her Quanticocharacter’s name (Alex) in an interview, and with the many religions in India, it’s true that you’re as likely to meet a Matthew as a Mahesh, but at least one of those is a name rarely heard on American television. Bringing in diverse characters is crucial, but Americanizing their names isn’t helping anybody.

At 10 half-hour episodes, Brown Nation is an easy binge, and an enjoyable one at that. There's no singular pop culture analogy for what it feels like, but the characters are authentic in their heritage and as goofy as any sitcom could want. In the meantime, Varghese and his colleagues wait tentatively for audience response and a possible second season.

"We’re just waiting on if there’s some good response, because we would love to do it," he says "I think there’s a lot of stories that we could portray with Hasmukh and his friends."