Goodness Gracious Me (TV series)

Goodness Gracious Me
DVD cover
Genre	Sketch comedy
Created by	Sanjeev Bhaskar Meera Syal Anil Gupta
Starring	Sanjeev Bhaskar Meera Syal Kulvinder Ghir Nina Wadia
Opening theme	Goodness Gracious Me (Bhangra version)
Ending theme	Goodness Gracious Me (Bhangra version)
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of series	6 (3 radio series and 3 TV series)
No. of episodes	36 (14 radio and 22 TV)
Production
Executive producer	Jon Plowman
Running time	30–50 mins
Original release
Network	BBC Radio 4
Release	5 July 1996 (1996-07-05) – 25 June 1998 (1998-06-25)
Network	BBC Two
Release	12 January 1998 (1998-01-12) – 25 August 2015 (2015-08-25)

Goodness Gracious Me is a

The cast casually drop Punjabi and Hindi slang phrases into their speech, in the manner of many British Asians living in the UK.

The Radio Show won Gold at the Sony Radio Academy Awards in 1997.^[1] The TV show won Best Entertainment at the Broadcasting Press Guild Award and the Team Award from the Royal Television Society, UK in 1999.

In March 2014, the BBC announced that the show would return with a special episode as part of celebrations of fifty years of BBC Two.^[2][3] An India special was broadcast on BBC Two on 25 August 2015.

Parodies and references in the show

• The Six Million Rupee Man – parodies The Six Million Dollar Man.
• I Know Him Too Well – parodies the song "I Know Him So Well".
• Skipinder: The Punjabi Kangaroo – parodies Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.
• I'm a Punjabi Girl... – parodies Aqua's "Barbie Girl" song.
• Hindi People – parodies Pulp's "Common People".
• Club Nirvana – parodies Wham!'s "Club Tropicana".
• The Marriage Emporium – pays homage to Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch and "Dead Parrot sketch".
• Fawlty Turrets – pays homage to Fawlty Towers.
• The Delhi Tubbies – fictional Asian equivalent of Teletubbies.
• They Were The Blacked-Up Men – parodies Men in Black.
• The Bhandari Bunch – parodies The Brady Bunch opening sequence.
• Channa's Angels – parodies Charlie's Angels
• Arranged Shag – parodies the arranged marriage
• Not Saving Private Narayan – parodies Saving Private Ryan

Other parodies are based on shows such as Animal Hospital (where members of lower castes take the place of the pets) and Rough Guides (where tourists from India visit and make unpleasant remarks about the United Kingdom).

Going for an English

One of the best known sketches featured the cast "going out for an English" after a few

• Cheque, Please – A man who, on serial dinner dates, always says something so tactless or offensive that the woman walks out on him, leaving him asking for the "Cheque, please!"
• The competitive mothers – Two women who constantly argue about the respective accomplishments of their sons, becoming more and more exaggerated as they go along. Their discussions always end with one of them using their catchphrase, "Yes, but how big is his danda?" (slang for penis)
• Mr "Everything Comes From India" – A man who insists that just about everything comes from India or was invented by Indians (often to the chagrin of his more knowledgeable son), including
  Prince Charles, who he claims to be African, because of the size of his ears), Superman (who is apparently Indian as he has two jobs, a bad haircut and, in a reference to Indian railways, can run faster than a train) and the number zero (which is a widely attributed discovery in Indian culture). In one short sketch, he was found in a bookshop, transferring books from the English and Chinese Literature sections to the Indian Literature section. He even claims that Jesus
  was Indian as he worked for his father, and managed to feed 5,000 people with very small amounts of food. He also claimed that everyone in the Bible was Indian, except God, as he "created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. What kind of Indian doesn't work Sundays?".
• The Coopers (Kapoors) and Robinsons (Rabindranaths) – Two snobbish
  courgettes
  in it. They refuse to acknowledge their real ethnic background under any circumstances, and become very upset whenever anyone refers to them as foreigners.
• Skipinder, The Punjabi Kangaroo – Redubbed footage of the television show about Skippy the Bush Kangaroo (1968–70), with the kangaroo being "voiced over" so that he can talk. Skippy, who now calls himself Skipinder, is always drunk, speaks in a Punjabi accent and frequently insults the other characters.
• The Bhangra Muffins – Two Anglo-Asian teenage boys who are always trying to be "cool" and attract girls, referring to them as ras malai (Indian sweet) but failing miserably. In their sketches, they seem to be having an intelligent discussion, albeit in their own "street" language, but it is then shown that they are doing something nonsensical or are in the wrong place (for example: in one episode they are waiting in the audience of what they think is a taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show, leading to a conversation about the purpose of television and talk shows in society, but then the show starts and they find out they have in fact gone to an opera performance by mistake.) Their catchphrase is "Kiss my chuddies, man!" – chuddies being slang for underwear.
• Chunky Lafunga (lafunga means "hooligan") – A
  Chunky Pandey) who is now trying to make his name in Western cinema, but manages to turn every production he appears in, from an adaptation of a Jane Austen novel to an Australian soap opera, into a Bollywood musical
  .
• Mrs "I can make it at home for nothing!" – A mother who, when out in restaurants with her family, repeatedly decries various things as wasteful, saying "I can make it at home for nothing!" For some reason she always seems to need "a small
  Masterchef, describing a series of complicated dishes she intends to cook, yet has only the ubiquitous aubergine in her ingredients. In later episodes she claims to be able to recreate other, non-food experiences for nothing – even reacting to the news that her husband has a mistress with "mistress I can make at home..." followed by flirtatious behaviour. She was inspired by Nina Wadia
  's mother.
• Meena and Beena, the Minx Twins – Two teenage Anglo-Indian girls who believe themselves to be highly desirable 'Asian babes' and complain about unwanted male attention and shout out rude comments at the men who walk past them, with the camera then pulling back to reveal why the men are there (e.g. in one sketch the girls are shown to have gone to a gay bar, in another they are standing outside a men's public toilet.) During one episode they actually managed to get dates, but insist on leaving because the men fail to offer to buy them a drink. Their catchphrase is: "In your dreams, buddy!" This can be varied, for example, in a Christmas sketch, when acting as Santa's assistants, they say to a little boy, "In your dreams, very small buddy!" Nina Wadia said on the BBC documentary Comedy Connections that Meera Syal was behind the creation of these characters and they are one of Nina's favourites on the series. "West End Girls" by the Pet Shop Boys frequently plays in the background of their scenes.
• Guru Maharishi Yogi (based on
  board games and football
  .
• Smita Smitten, Showbiz Kitten (from Series 2, her name becomes "Smeeta Smitten") – A "showbiz gossip" style TV reporter who claims to be at a big movie premiere or showbiz party, but turns out to be somewhere very ordinary, like queueing outside a video shop or a public bathroom. She is then refused entrance, so to distract the viewers, she finishes by saying "Look, there goes Art Malik!" and running out of the picture. She was once in a chip shop, and Art Malik was there, but she did not recognise him. After making a fool of herself, she tried to get out of the situation by pointing to Art outside the shop, and running after him. Fellow character Chunky Lafunga is the only "celebrity" she has ever managed to interview. In Series 2 she loses her job and resorts to presenting her TV show from different rooms of her mother's house, then in Series 3 produces a variety of pilot shows for a possible new TV series, with disastrous results.
• Uncle Fixer – A man who shows up to greet different family members in unexpected places, such as at a
  transplant
  operation, and then asks why they didn't come to him for help with the arrangements, because "I could have got it for you much cheaper!". He often says "Don't worry" or "Don't insult me!" when people decline his help. He usually destroys what was the topic of conversation i.e. cash from a cash machine and a kidney.
• The Sindi Dolls – Two wealthy young women who act like
  air stewardesses, and reveal to the flight passengers during the emergency procedure instructions that they only took the jobs because of the glamour factor. In one notable sketch they state their opinion that a friend of theirs should make more effort with her appearance, "leprosy
  or no leprosy".
• Will I, bollocks! (Ironic Granny) – This sketch follows an old woman who is continually causing trouble for her family, then when she is asked to do something to help with the situation, she replies: "Will I, bollocks!" In the last of her sketches, she collapses at home and her son-in-law, Ravi, offers to perform mouth to mouth resuscitation but when his wife asks him if he will really do it, he says, "Will I, bollocks!"
• The Delhi Students – These sketches are about four Indian young adults who go to England and describe their experiences. They parody the way westerners act when they visit India (in one sketch, they remark on the number of beggars on the streets; they say that you can't eat meat off the street, in reference to a McDonald's burger; and they say that you must drink water from a bottle, as tap water could be dangerous).
• Bhangraman – A parody of
  Morris Dancer
  .
• The Reporter – A reporter constantly tries to do "exposés" on British Asians. He often runs into Mr Ishaq, a Muslim man whom the reporter interviews. The reporter assumes that Mr Ishaq is "up to something", ultimately being disappointed when Mr Ishaq reveals that he is doing something extremely ordinary.
• The
  Nirvana
  . He has an "exterminator" friend who would make the mice reincarnate as pebbles, "which are much easier to catch, they don't run about as much." His catchline is: "Kill?! No, no, we mustn't kill".

Series

Television show

Series 1 (1998)

Series 2 (1998)

Series 3 (2000)

Specials

Cast and crew

See also

• British television programmes with Asian leads
• The Kumars at No. 42, another British comedy show about an Indian family
• The Real McCoy, a preceding sketch comedy show about Black British life and British Asians, including the creators of Goodness Gracious Me
• Citizen Khan, sitcom about a British-Pakistani family
• Brown Nation, Indian-American comedy show
• Fresh Off the Boat, sitcom about a Taiwanese-American family
• Kim's Convenience, sitcom about a Korean-Canadian family

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Goodness Gracious Me (TV & radio).

• Goodness Gracious Me at BBC Online
• Goodness Gracious Me at BBC Online Comedy Guide
• Goodness Gracious Me at British Comedy Guide
• Goodness Gracious Me at
  IMDb
• Goodness Gracious Me at epguides.com
• Goodness Gracious Me at the BFI's Screenonline
• In Conversation with Meera Syal,
  BAFTA
  webcast, March 2008