Netflix gives Russell Peters His Own TV Show and He Plays on The Same-Old, Age-Old Indian Stereotypes and Clichés – The Indian Detective
The Indian Detective – TV Show
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Russell Peters stars in Netflix‘s The Indian Detective along with Hollywood and Bollywood veterans: William Shatner and Anupam Kher. Before its release, Indians thought they finally had a Hollywood TV show they could binge on that had Hindi as its alternate language. Sadly, The Indian Detective blows. The show is not even free of the ‘mystical Indian music’, the irritating sitar note which has forever been used by Hollywood to depict India.
Even though the show has a cast comprising Indians, and a story based in India, along with a wide range of clichéd jokes based on Indian stereotypes, however, it’s not for Indians.
The four-part series follows Russell Peters as Doug D’Mello, a a fish-out-of-water police officer from Toronto, Canada who becomes embroiled in a murder investigation and uncovers a dangerous conspiracy while visiting his father Stanley D’Mello (Anupam Kher) in Bombay while serving a one month suspension for incompetence. D’Mello was suspended following a bordertown drug bust that he orchestrated with his partner Robyn which went humiliatingly awry.
The Indian Detective – Why Watch It
There are few good things to say about this Netflix release. The only USP of The Indian Detective is its main attraction, Russell Peters. He does a good job of portraying a cop and sticks to what he knows best about acting. Anupam Kher is amazing as always, there is little to say about him that hasn’t been said already.
The most I can say in favour of this show is that it’s a light-hearted cop show and tries to give an honest opinion on things. It’s standard Hollywood TV keeping the white population in mind, while trying to establish a fan-base in India.
The Indian Detective – Why Not
Indian immigrants, like everyone else, lose their accent after a generation or two and develop the accent of the new country. This is primarily why Hollywood has had a bad rep of casting people for films/TV shows that have dialogues in foreign languages: the actors mercilessly butcher the language by using a made-up accent. The terrible accent the actors (except Kher) passed off as what they think was Hindi is proof of this.
Also, the addition of Hindi is clickbait for us Indians, the producers trying to rope in viewers from the subcontinent. Making a Hindi-based Hollywood TV show is a clever tactic to target the millions of Indians who binge on Netflix. This is also apparent from the addition of a veteran Bollywood actor to the cast, Anupam Kher, who lends the only credible performance as an Indian.
I enjoy Russell Peters and his branch of observational comedy based on racial, ethnic, class and cultural stereotypes, but, even my adulation for Peters cannot make me biased towards the mediocrity that is The Indian Detective. Russell Peters’ jokes based on Indian stereotypes, or any other for that matter, are extremely funny on the stage, but it fails to incite any laughs on a comedy series. The jokes are old, and even William Shatner comes off as a clichéd villain.
As a police procedural, The Indian Detective is subpar. Sadly, it also fails as a parody, or even as a comedy.
Verdict of The Idiot
Idiot-o-Meter: Take It Easy, Dude!
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The Idiot’s Rating System:
4.0 – 5.0: The Dude Abides!
3.0 – 4.0: Far Out, Man!
2.0 – 3.0: Take It Easy, Dude!
1.0 – 2.0: You’re Out Of Your Element!
0.0 – 1.0: The Goddamn Plane Has Crashed Into The Mountain!
The Idiot's Corner 
5
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5
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