It is so difficult to know what to expect when sitting down to watch a comedy about an Indian call centre. Any office based sitcom produced now will be compared to The Office with Ricky Gervais which captured some great characters. Call centres are very diverse, and a great source of material…so I’m hoping to see more characters develop over the coming weeks.
I’m not sure how true to life the setting really is, as for the sake of the story and the filming; the location is actually very small. In real life, most Indian centres I have been to are far larger with more desks much closer together. I’m sure we would all love that amount of space in our centres in real life!
It is certainly easy to relate to the characters involved, and even relate them to yourself. I’m sure those of you, who like me, started life on the phones, can empathise with the guy cold calling for mobile phones and having a nervous breakdown by the end of the day. And it’s certainly typical of many places I have been too where there is some kind of crisis for customers, and the managers are too busy promoting their own egos to actually do their day job or even notice. The dancing scene, reminded me of the time we held a “Vegas Day” through the whole call centre, without head office or health and safety ever finding out!
Impossible to know at this stage how the story lines will play out, but it is clearly going to revolve around the dynamic between existing (and dejected) manager Kenny, and Terri, the new manager bought in. This is spot on, and is all too familiar with the personality clashes and ego competitions seen all too frequently.
There have been many times when I have said you can only have one person running the call centre. It will be interesting to see who wins in this one.