Rajiv Mehra’s Hindi sitcom Zabaan Sambhalke is being remade into a television series by Alt Balaji, the company announced on Saturday. Set in the National Institute of Languages, the new series will focus on a set of “crazy and quirky characters from the Hindi class of 2018”, a press release said.
The 10-episode remake will also be directed by Mehra, and will feature Sumeet Raghavan, Bakhtiyar Irani, Soma Anand, Tarannum and Nyra Banerjee, among others. In an interview in July, Mehra had said that the remake would have more characters than the original. “This time we will be adding a few more characters, like a Haryanvi guy, a North-East Indian girl, a Maharashtrian from Koli background, a Bhojpuri starlet and an NRI girl from the US,” Mehra said.
Inspired by the British sitcom Mind Your Language (1977), the original Zabaan Sambhalke focused on the experiences of engineer Mohan Bharti (Pankaj Kapur), who is forced to teach Hindi at NIL, and his culturally diverse group of students. It also featured Shubha Khote, Viju Khote, Tom Alter, Bhavana Balsar and Tanaaz Iraani.
Zabaan Sambhalke was aired on DD Metro from 1993 to 1994 and on Home TV from 1997 to 1998. Reruns were later broadcast on the Sab TV and Bindass channels. It was directed by Stuart Allen.
