It's a talk show! It's a sitcom! It's a hybrid!

		Preview 'The Kumars at No. 42' When: 9 p.m. Sunday on BBC America

Sunday at 9 p.m., BBC America premieres "The Kumars at No. 42," an unusual half-hour British import about a young man who hosts a TV talk show from a studio added on to his family's home.

An Indian family that lives in North London, the Kumars make the talk show a family affair. Son Sanjeev (Sanjeev Bhaskar) is the talk show's ostensible host, but his buttinski parents, Madhuri (Indira Joshi) and Ashwin (Vincent Ebrahim), and randy grandmother, Sushila (Meera Syal), are active participants, too.

Each week celebrity guests, including Richard E. Grant, Donny Osmond and British talk show host Michael Parkinson, drop by for what's surely one of the more unique interview experiences of their careers.

Ashwin engages Grant in a discussion about the quickest way to navigate Grant's neighborhood. Then Ashwin turns to Grant's home purchase.

"Did you buy at a good time?" Ashwin asks Grant.

Granny asks Grant about one of his "Bram Stoker's Dracula" co-stars: "Is it true Winona Ryder has a wooden leg or is it just her acting?"

And so it goes as the celebrities look both shocked by the situation they find themselves in and maybe a little relieved it's not the same old talk show formula.

At a BBC America press conference last month, Bhaskar, who also created the show, said he was inspired by his own experiences bringing a date home to meet his parents.

"And my dad says, 'Very pleased to meet you. How much does your father earn?' " Bhaskar recalled. "And I said, 'Dad, you can't ask that.' And he said, 'Why not? I'm only asking a question. She doesn't have to answer it if she doesn't want to.'? And my mum steps in at that point and I thought, voice of reason, thank God. And my mum said, 'I'm sorry about Sanjeev, he's always been terrible at handling rejection.' And this is like, the first 30 seconds."

When he started acting, Bhaskar wondered what would happen if he became friends with famous people and brought them home to meet his parents.

"And I thought, they wouldn't react any differently, and that was the basis of the show," Bhaskar said.

"I think everybody understands family relationships. Everyone understands a mum who's obsessed with something and a dad who's obsessed with something. [And if you're] surrounded by randy grannies it's very, very scary, especially if you're male and you have somebody coming toward you who wants to kiss you when their teeth are flapping independently of their lips."

That uncomfortableness aside, Bhaskar wanted the granny to shine.

"I wanted to do a show where the oldest person wasn't the slowest, the dumbest, the one who didn't know what was going on. I wanted to reverse that slightly. So the eldest character, the glamorous granny, was the one who knew everything and the youngest, who was me, didn't know a thing."

Bhaskar said another goal with the "Kumars" was to make the guests be a part of the program as opposed to being the butt of the jokes.

"I wanted guests to be able to be themselves when they came on. We don't tutor them in any way. We don't tell them what they can and can't say. And that leads to the kind of improv element of the show. The moment they come through the front door is the first moment they see the family and the family sees them."

The "Kumars" has been adapted by TV networks worldwide. An Australian version features a Greek family. In Holland, the family is Surinamese. Fox created an American version, featuring a Hispanic family a year ago and filmed a half-dozen episodes, but "The Ortegas" never was broadcast.

"I'm disappointed for the people who were producing it and for the people who were involved in it," Bhaskar said of the aborted American version. "But, hey, it wasn't me."