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The unpredictability of Romesh Ranganathan's extended family was the making of our series, says series producer Ben Green
Ben Green
Series producer
When Rumpus managing director Iain Wimbush and I met Romesh Ranganathan to talk about the possibility of making a travel show, we were all very excited that we'd got a genuine reason for going somewhere - he is Sri Lankan and his mother has always wanted him to discover his roots.
It was great to have a genuine motivation, great that he had relatives scattered across the country, and great that we could use these relatives to motivate scenes in what we hoped would be a natural device.
What we then realised of course was that what may not be so great were the relatives themselves.
Our first foray into the world of Romesh's relatives was for the taster tape we made at his mum's house in Crawley. His mum, Shanthi, gave an amazing rundown of exactly what she wanted Romesh to do in the series, from spear fishing to taking part in religious festivals. It was pre-title worthy sync, but unfortunately we had failed to have a shot of her at the time. "Shanthi that was amazing," I said. "Would you mind repeating exactly that...