When you think about shows involving mobsters, family feuds, drug trafficking and in-over-their-heads characters, I bet The Sopranos, Power or Breaking Bad come to mind. What you probably haven’t imagined, though, is a pair of quirky Pakistani-American brothers haphazardly learning how to run a cocaine empire out of a Philadelphia corner store. In Hulu’s Deli Boys, which debuts on March 6, Asif Ali’s Mir and Saagar Shaikh’s Raj Dar do their best — and worst — to help themselves and the business survive.
The first 10 minutes of the series set the tone in this wild, genre-bending mix of dark comedy, crime drama and action from creator Abdullah Saeed. And that blend makes it a ridiculously fun watch that evokes a feel similar to Weeds or The Brothers Sun. There is a lot happening in Deli Boys, and it starts off with the unexpected bloody death of the wealthy family patriarch, Baba (Iqbal Theba), who was running multiple businesses that get his sons — and the rest of the family — into trouble after he dies. And by “rest of the family,” I mean crime family.
Shaikh plays elder brother Raj, a free-spirited professional slacker who loves marijuana, is chakra-conscious and has a room in his home that he shares with his like-minded girlfriend, Prairie. Ali stars as the buttoned-up younger brother Mir, who wants to follow in his father’s corporate footsteps to manage the family’s chain of convenience stores. Neither of them knows their father is part of the criminal underworld until after he’s gone, and they get a hilarious crash course in reality from Poorna Jagannathan’s “Auntie” Lucky and “Uncle” Ahmad (Brian George).
For years, Baba had been selling cocaine hidden in jars of Achaar that had been funding their luxurious lifestyle the whole time. Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean it’s over. Debts are owed, and the Dars need to survive.
Raj, Mir, “Auntie” Lucky and “Uncle” Ahmad plead their case to a crime boss.
“Why would you steal your own cocaine, you idiots?” Lucky asks the pair as they package the product in their underwear. Her tough love and coaching in the drug game usher the brothers through deal-making with an Italian mob boss, competition with a rival family and heat from a cartel. Her handling of her nitwit nephews and stylish mastery of guns and business make Lucky an entertaining character. She’s a stone-cold killer who teaches them that sometimes they must be, too.
Through every half-hour episode, Mir and Dar are perpetually shocked and confused as sheltered “spoiled brats” who are tossed into encounters with enemies inside and outside their inner circle while facing FBI scrutiny and arguing like siblings do. In one scene, they’re supposed to dispose of a body and it doesn’t go as planned. It’s a sequence that plays out in goofball fashion but ends up a bloody mess. Teamwork and wet work amusingly go hand in hand. As I said, there is a whole lot happening here.
Raj and Mir, looking confused as usual.
Watching them figure out what the heck to do will, at times, have you wondering, “Now, why would they do that?” Raj and Mir are often unsure of themselves on this newfound path, and a theme about family helps to ground that part of the story. And it’s a story filled with colorful people like Tan France, who plays a hitman, and there’s also a cocaine boss who’s emotionally sensitive about his craft. Guillermo Diaz even shows up as a guest star doing some supernatural acrobatics.
Deli Boys is colorful, cheeky and loud — with a few cool fight sequences and aggressively violent deaths that are meant to be the opposite of disturbing. Asif and Shaikh’s sibling chemistry is convincing in their portrayal of Mir and Raj. Everyone around them has a hard time believing in them, and sometimes they have a hard time themselves. Are we supposed to be rooting for these brothers to succeed as cocaine dealers? I’m not sure, but it’s worth the wacky trip to ABC Deli with these boys.
Read the full article here