Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s fortnightly strand in which we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films killing it in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track. So we’re going to do the hard work for you.
This week, we’re heading back to Canada for the first time in over a year to check out Late Bloomer, Jasmeet Raina‘s culture-clash comedy series about a Sikh family living in Toronto. The former YouTuber’s show recently launched its second season on Crave, providing more insight into the life of a Millennial with all the trappings of the Western world balanced against the traditional values of an Asian immigrant family.
Name: Late BloomerCountry: CanadaNetwork: CraveProducer: Pier 21/Blink49 Studios in association with Bell MediaFor fans of: Atlanta, The SopranosDistributor: Cineflix Rights (S1), Bell Media/Sphere Abacus (S2)
Watch on Deadline
Late Bloomer‘s route to Canadian streamer Crave is just as unique as the backstory of its creator, Jasmeet Raina AKA Jus Reign. The series, which stars Raina as a conflicted Sikh Millennial in modern-day Toronto, owes its creation to everything from YouTube to The Sopranos, to its producer Pier 21 and Crave, the Bell Media-owned service.
Raina stars as as Jasmeet Dutta, a turban-wearing 30-something struggling to square his western upbringing and ambitions as a content creator with obligations to his immigrant family and Punjabi community. “Sometimes those ideas are clashing a lot, and he has to work out which ideas work and which don’t, all set up within this zany, kooky internet space,” says Raina, aptly speaking on Zoom from Toronto.
Also starring in the half-hour series are Baljinder Singh Atwal, Sandeep Bali, Ashley Ganger, Ahamed Weinberg, Sachin Mahashi, Sukhman Gill, Baldeep Sehmbi and Seher Khot. A second season of the show just launched on Crave, with Raina making his directorial debut in the first two new episodes.
Raina began his career in video in the 2010s as one of Much Digital Studios’ original digital creators under the moniker Jus Reign, and quickly made a name for himself for his comedic observations about his upbringing and Punjabi family life, pop culture parodies and comments on race and class. His sketches, which had high production values given they were guerrilla-made, amassed a large audience online and convinced him to do away with his doctor studies.
Then in 2017, he simply stopped posting on social media and disappeared. Speculation was rife about where he’d gone – and some even speculated whether he was still alive. The truth was undramatic. Continually posting had tired him out physically and emotionally, and he had decided to turn his creative powers towards what would become Late Bloomer.
“It wasn’t as deep as people wanted it to seem,” he says. “I just wanted to take a break, and I didn’t want to be one of those YouTubers that post videos with ‘We Need To Talk’ as the title. I didn’t have an answer to give and it didn’t feel authentic of me to say anything. I just wanted to take some time out and focus on writing the show.”
The plan was to write the series, which tonally sits somewhere between comedy and drama, and then return creatively refreshed in a year. “In my mind, the series was going to take a few weeks to write,” he recalls. “I had no idea it would take that much longer.” Even so, Raina says there was no going back. “I always wanted to head into the TV and film space,” he says. “As fun as YouTube is, I wanted to creatively challenge myself more, whether that was acting, producing, directing or writing.”
The series initially went to the CBC, which had it in development for two years, but ultimately “creative differences” over the vision led Raina to take the project elsewhere fearing it would become too broad where it was. Raina adds: “In my opinion, the more nuanced and real it feels, the more audiences will pick up on that. That’s my philosophy when I make anything and that is what worked on YouTube.”
Crave’s Justin Stockman and his team had been supportive of Raina’s trajectory, and soon the project landed at the streamer and scored a greenlight, with stand-up comedian Russell Peters, another Canadian with Indian immigrant parents, joining as executive producer.
While Raina admits he has felt “imposter syndrome” producing and creatively leading the show, he says a mixture of the skills he developed on YouTube and his passion for the project helped him through development and production. “I knew what the vision was, and that vision is a very important cornerstone of making anything – the creator needs to clearly understand what it is,” he says.
Raina had been inspired by both his upbringing and pop culture references such as HBO mob drama The Sopranos, which he recalls being “the first time I felt I could relate to a family on screen, adding: “Italian culture is randomly very similar to Indian culture, in the way our family structures are – twenty people coming over to the hospital when one person is sick or thirty people coming to a funeral with food. I could even understand my dad a little better from what Tony Soprano was going through.”
Donald Glover’s Atlanta provided another comparable point of inspiration: both Raina and Glover began creative life on YouTube. “I am fascinated by people who start off in the internet space,” says Raina. “He’s obviously had way more TV experience, but he was also a pioneer of those in the internet space breaking into the TV space. Even though I’m not from Atlanta or the Black community, there is so much in that show that felt real and so true to the experience. Then I felt like I could relate to a lot of what Paperboy went through on the internet.”
Season 1 began with a storyline partly inspired by Curb Your Enthusiasm in which Jasmeet and his friends attempt to track down a missing laptop before its contents, which include nudes of himself, are seen by the Punjabi community. The show would go on to tackle the art of going viral, the significance of the turban, online haters, community spirit and a disastrous traditional rokha ceremony. One major challenge was subtly including exposition on the various quirks of Punjabi culture, such as the number of religious holidays. “I tried to balance it so it feels like a natural conversation,” says Raina.
The first run was a top 10 Canadian comedy series launch for Crave, prompting the renewal. Season 2 has begun even more creatively, with Raina’s directorial debut taking the comedy back to his high school life in the early 2000s, and Jordan Singh Sahni and Lennox Blue Powell playing younger versions of Jasmeet and his cousin, Neal, in an episode that touches on anti-Sikh racism following 9/11. Though he considers himself a “visual” writer who likes to create storyboards and was hands on with feedback on performances during Season 1’s shoot, Raina admits directing was “a wild experience” and a challenge as he learned the in-and-outs of the job on the job.
Double episodes have been dropping each Friday since April 11. Bell Media, which recently acquired international distributor Sphere Abacus, has taken on distribution of Season 2, with Cineflix Rights having handled Season 1. Run the Burbs showrunner Shebli Zarghami is showrunning the second season, with Raina and his long-time production partner, Baljinder Dhawan, acting as exec producers, alongside others including those from Pier21, Russell and Clayton Peters and Stockman, Crave’s Vice President for Content Development & Programming.
Canadian PM Mark Carney’s Liberals have now won the federal election and the party has made significant pledges to support local culture including the CBC. Raina wasn’t too fussed who won but speaks passionately about how only those stories that reflect the uniqueness of the country and its cultures will make a mark beyond Canadian borders.
“We’re definitely facing a struggle competing on the international level, and we obviously don’t have the amount of people, time, resources or budget of our American counterparts,” he says. “But what we have here are very beautiful, unique and interesting stories. Canada’s in a unique place where there is this demand for original Canadian content that feels real, shows like Late Bloomers and my buddies’ [Jey and Trey Richards’] sitcom The Office Movers that you’re not going to see anywhere else. We should try to empower these stories because that is what is going to set us apart and help us compete on the global stage that is our strength. Supporting those voices as much as we can is the key.”
The post Former YouTuber Jasmeet Raina’s Culture-Clash Comedy ‘Late Bloomer’ Owes More To ‘The Sopranos’ Than Meets The Eye appeared first on Deadline.
