#BadmaashWeek: “Man like Mobeen” is a hooligan with a heart

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By Fareeha Molvi

(This post was originally published to Instagram on November 19, 2020)

Arguably, the most sympathetic badmaash of the week is Guz Khan’s “Man like Mobeen.” The BBC Three comedy tells the story of British-Pakistani Mobeen (Guz Khan), a former drug dealer who’s trying to clean up his life in working-class Birmingham, UK.

Brown gangsters (l-r): Nav (Nikesh Patel), Uncle Khan (Art Malik) and Mobeen (Guz Khan)

Mobeen is a troublemaker in the sense that he dropped out to sell drugs and has seen and done “some stuff” in the process. But his heart has always been in the right place. He’s given up the dealer life to single-handedly raise his much younger sister, Aqsa to do better than he did. His dream is for Aqsa to finish school and become a doctor.

But his life on the straight and narrow takes a sudden turn when an incident puts him and his loved ones in the crosshairs of a sinister crime boss, Uncle Khan (Art Malik) and his inept thug nephew, Nav (Nikesh Patel). Mobeen is forced to do Khan’s demented bidding and get back into the drug game, or else.

It’s quite a departure, and one we don’t often see South Asians taking part in. In American media, usually South Asian “rebellious acts” are along the lines of majoring in music and dating outside the culture. South Asians are generally portrayed as obedient and non-threatening (unless, of course, it’s terrorism) – in other words “a model minority.” That’s definitely not the case with “Mobeen” and it’s cast of brown gangsters. It’s worth noting that the show is from the U.K., where the Asian model minority myth doesn’t exist in the same way as it does in the U.S.