--- name: "Sharat Sardana" canonical: "https://film.one/person/sharat-sardana" fi1m_id: "sharat-sardana" imdb_id: "nm1032487" tmdb_id: 1214962 wikidata_id: "Q2337643" roles: ["Writer"] born: "20 August 1968" died: "27 January 2009" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "writer" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-10-07T13:16:48.805325+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Sharat Sardana ## Identity Sharat Sardana - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/sharat-sardana - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** sharat-sardana - **IMDb ID:** nm1032487 - **TMDB ID:** 1214962 - **Wikidata ID:** Q2337643 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharat_Sardana, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2337643, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1032487/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1214962 Writer. Born 20 August 1968 in London. Died 27 January 2009. ## Details - **Work:** Writer - **Born:** 20 August 1968, London - **Died:** 27 January 2009 - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharat_Sardana, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2337643, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1032487/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1214962 ## Streaming the US now - **The Roku Channel:** [*The Kumars at No. 42*](https://film.one/tv/the-kumars-at-no-42.md) (77) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Sharat Sardana > A sketch and sitcom writer who built old-fashioned British comedy out of British-Asian family life and let the shape of the joke do the arguing. *The Kumars at No. 42* is one idea stretched across seven series, and Meera Syal's grandmother is what we would keep. The living room in Wembley has a family in it and a famous guest. Sardana and Sanjeev Bhaskar's scripts for *The Kumars at No. 42* (2001) give the parents and the grandmother a handful of lines each, and then the writing steps out of the way and lets the celebrity decide how much of the game to play. The join between the written part and the unwritten part is visible, and the show never pretends otherwise. We laughed hardest not at the lines but in the half-second after them, when Helena Bonham Carter or Robson Green sat deciding whether to answer Meera Syal's grandmother as a character or as a person, because the script had been built to make that silence happen. He came to it as a BBC script editor. With his school friend Richard Pinto he wrote sketches for the radio and television versions of *Goodness Gracious Me* (1996–2001), the first British sketch show with an all-Asian cast; the pair supplied more than half of it, including 'Going for an English', which turns the late-night curry stereotype on its head. The two then moved to Hat Trick and made *Small Potatoes* (1999–2001), a sitcom set in an east London video shop and built on talk about nothing much, which was only patchily successful. *The Kumars*, co-created with Bhaskar, ran from 2001 to 2006; the animated *Bromwell High* (2005), about a London comprehensive, and the one-off *Chopratown* (2005) followed. He died in January 2009, aged 40. The method was old-fashioned on purpose. Sardana wanted punchlines and songs, the shapes of the British sketch show and the studio sitcom rather than the cutting styles of his contemporaries, and he described *Goodness Gracious Me* as 'British. Very old-fashioned British comedy. Purposely.' The subject was British-Asian family life and what the rest of Britain made of it, with characters drawn from people he knew, and the joke nearly always came from reversal, from putting the familiar thing the wrong way round and watching it look absurd. He and Pinto set out to write something that was funny before it was Asian, and the sketches entered the language because of it. Bhaskar and Syal gave the characters bodies; Anil Gupta produced nearly all of it. The limits are the format's. *The Kumars* has one idea, a chat show hidden inside a sitcom, and seven series is a long time to tell it. It is best when the guest stops competing with the family and lets Syal's grandmother win, and no writer can arrange that in advance. What Sardana could arrange was the frame, written well enough that other people could stand in it, which is harder than it sounds. Start with *Goodness Gracious Me*, take the Kumars one episode at a time, and watch the guest's face in the moment the script stops. ## Biography Sharat Sardana (20 August 1968 – 27 January 2009) was a British comedy writer and producer. He graduated in English from Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, and joined a BBC script editing scheme. With writing partner Richard Pinto, he worked on the sketch series *Goodness Gracious Me* (radio from 1996; television 1998–2001). He co-created and wrote for the series *The Kumars at No. 42* (2001–2006), also serving as producer on several episodes. Other credits include the series *Small Potatoes* (1999–2001), the short film *Inferno* (2001) and the television film *Chopratown* (2005). *The Kumars at No. 42* won two International Emmy Awards. Sardana died in London aged 40 from a streptococcal infection. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, theguardian.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *The Kumars at No. 42* (2001), Fi1m 77, Creator, Writer — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-kumars-at-no-42.md) ## Complete filmography (2) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Chopratown* (2005), series, Creator - *The Kumars at No. 42* (2001), series, Writer, Creator — Fi1m 77, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-kumars-at-no-42.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/sharat-sardana