X-Men director Bryan Singer to direct NBC comedy about home shopping

by Noelle McElhatton, marketingdirectmag.co.uk 11-Sep-09, 10:55

LONDON - First we had the call centre sitcom, now a TV comedy about home shopping.

Hard on the heels of Mumbai Calling, ITV'S sitcom based in an Indian call centre, US TV station NBC has announced it has commissioned a TV series based on home shopping.

Augusten Burroughs' comedy novel SelleVision was set behind the scenes of a home shopping cable channel and is being developed as a one-hour NBC series.

Pushing Daisies and Heroes writer Bryan Fuller and X-Men director Bryan Singer are on board to write and direct respectively.

"We will keep true to the tone of the book, and most of the characters will be the same," Fuller said.

Singer directed the pilot for the award-winning Fox drama House and executive produces the series.

NBC is the creator of the US version of The Office and America's Got Talent, ER and soap opera Days of our Lives.

Mumbai Calling was premiered in May 2009 and received critical praise for the realistic portrayal of "sweated labour" in fictional failing call centre Teknobable.

Mumbai Calling features actor and writer Sanjeev Bhaska, star of The Kumars at No 42 and a former call centre worker in real life, as Kenny Gupta, a British-born Indian who is sent out to a Mumbai to turn around Teknobable.