Cleanup on Aisle 2! The proprietors of a convenience store are faced with a mess a lot worse than a couple of broken pickle jars in Collider‘s exclusive new teaser for Deli Boys. The series centers around two pampered Pakistani-American brothers who have to take over their father’s secret criminal empire after his sudden death. The ten-episode crime comedy miniseries will premiere March 6 on Hulu.
Our brief teaser features Mir (Asif Ali, Wrecked), Raj (Saagar Shaikh, Ms. Marvel), and Lucky (Poorna Jagannathan, The Night Of) overseeing the cleanup of a gruesome crime scene, including at least one dead body, in their convenience store. Meanwhile, someone’s fleeing the store clad in nothing but his tighty-whities and a paper sack over his head. The series revolves around Mir and Raj Dar, the scions of a convenience store chain owned and operated by their father; when he suddenly dies, however, they realize his business involved dealing goods alot more dangerous and illegal than deli sandwiches. Together with Lucky, their father’s closest associate, hard-working Mir and party-boy Raj are going to have to venture into the criminal underworld themselves…with hilarious results.
Collider‘s Tania Hussain recently spoke with series creator Abdullah Saeed about the new series. Having previewed the upcoming episodes, Hussain thanked Saeed for bringing such authentic and delightful representation of South Asian culture to the comedy series. Saeed explained that in this case, he simply wrote what he knew. He told Collider:
“Honestly, I wasn’t trying too hard with the representation stuff and I think that’s what really helped. I feel like the person who read it didn’t feel like: oh, this person is trying to represent a certain ethnic group or educate me in some way. It’s truly just entertainment. The byproduct is that you get to learn about Pakistanis — Pakistani-Americans specifically — and our culture, our relationships, our hardships with balancing the two halves of our cultural identities and all that stuff. I think that the lack of effort of really trying to shape that for a specific audience, or really trying to like, have a mission for what we’re trying to say, allows the characters to exist as flawed, weird, kind of silly, but also, heartfelt characters.”
Who Stars in ‘Deli Boys’?
In addition to Ali, Shaikh, and Jagannathan, the series will also star Alfie Fuller (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) as Prairie, Raj’s hipster shaman, and Brian George (The Big Bang Theory) as a hardworking employee of DarCo. Recurring actors include Kevin Corrigan (Goodfellas) as a local mafioso; Alexandra Ruddy (City of Lies) and Tim Baltz (The Righteous Gemstones) as FBI agents; Zainne Selah (Good Trouble) as Mir’s fiancée and Sakina Jaffrey (Billions) as her mother; Amita Rao (Emperor of Ocean Park) as a cosplayer with a crush on Raj; and Anish Jethmalani (Station Eleven) and Minita Gandhi (Chicago PD) as a married duo of local restauranteurs. It will also feature the acting debut of Queer Eye‘s Tan France, who will play a British Pakistani gang leader.
Deli Boys was created by Abdullah Saeed (High Maintenance) and developed by Jenni Konner (Welcome to Chippendales) and Nora Silver (Single Drunk Female) under Jenni Konner Productions. Michelle Nader (Shifting Gears) is the showrunner; she also executive produces alongside Saeed, Konner, and Silver. Nisha Ganatra (Freakier Friday) executive produces and directs the pilot, with Vali Chandrasekaran (Modern Family) also executive producing the pilot.
Deli Boys will premiere on Hulu on March 6, 2025. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates, and watch the new teaser for Deli Boys above.
via Collider