London, Feb 25: Make way for Bulbul Sand, whose vernacular surname rhymes with the aspirational Anglophile ‘hand’, as Mumbai’s social-climbers get a role model straight from a decade-old British comedy series little known to India. The forthcoming Kauva Chala Hans ki Chaal (KCHC), an Indian remake of Britain’s irritatingly-realist study of snobbery, Keeping up Appearances, latches on to the ‘Ji Mantriji’ phenomenon.
It re-does popular BBC comedy in Hindi, at Indian prices and with Indian mores.
Experts say, it kickstarts the era of the re-cycle Raj with the BBC admitting it plans to re-make at least two titles every year for India for the foreseeable future.
KCHC is only the second time the BBC is totally to re-make a TV series, adjusting names, plot, language, traditions and social customs to suit the destined market, India, confirmed BBC Worldwide managing director Monisha Shah. The show, to be shot in Mumbai from next month with actress Ketaki Dave in the lead, is to be screened in summer. It has "rakhi-sisters", "samosas" and other sexually-conservative, near-virginal, non-alcoholic, typically Indian alternatives to the raunchier, boozier British version, Shah told this paper.

The original British show, screened in the UK from 1990 and later broadcast just as it was in the culturally Anglo-centric US, Australia and 40 other countries, revolves around a suburban English housewife Haycinth Bucket.

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Just as Bulbul Sand is soon to begin her Indian summer by reprimanding everyone for pronouncing her surname to denote the unglamorous buffalo (sandh), Haycinth witheringly insists her surname is pronounced ‘Bouquet’.

Haycinth, a super-snob, fits the image of class-conscious Britain as she endlessly advertises her "select candlelight suppers" and high-class "connections", while fawning over titled people. Similarly, Bulbul, Haycinth’s Indian avataar, is supposed to denote the socially-conscious, "have-money-will-flaunt-it" Indian, a class that is growing and could approximate anywhere between 50 and 300 million.
BBC Worldwide’s Shah acknowledges that KCHC comes after the success notched by Ji Mantriji, the Hindi remake of the classic political satire Yes Minister, two years ago. "Even Vajpayeeji asked for the tapes", she said. But the new programme lacks ‘Yes Minister’‘s history. "Keeping up appearances is just an entertainment programme and it’s not really very well known in India," Shah admitted, adding that the Hindi version would build on India’s limited, "sketchy" familiarity with the programme in the early 90s.
On Monday, a wondering industry said the BBC’s recycle Raj appeared to be paying its way, even as a pleased Shah pointed out that even the recycled Hindi fare had been re-sold with Ji Mantriji airing in Mauritius right now.