It's the season of mangoes
A Mango Madness backstory
Let me start off with the current news and then take you back into the backstory of what I’m about to tell you…c’mon follow me down my memory lane, it’s a juicy story.
Nikhil & Jay - the pilot episode Nikhil & Jay and the Messiest Mango that I wrote with enormous help from Becky Overton (our head-writer) and Katie Simmons (our producer) was the pilot episode that has been nominated for the Irish Animation Awards this year.
That is the good news! To make it even sweeter, it’s my first TV writing nomination and that’s a big deal for me! I’m relatively new to this field and getting a nomination gives me a lot of confidence to keep going in the chosen path.
Now to the first backstory - or flashback if you will:
The story of Nikhil & Jay the Messiest Mango is a true story inspired by my first nephew who on his first birthday devoured a mango to its pit. And that’s how we eat mangoes at home - fully - including the skin and all of its juicy flesh.
When we pitched the show, this was the story that we wanted to write to convince the BBC that our show is going to be fun, funny and full of juicy cultural details that will resonate with all audiences across the UK. With the help of Katie Simmons, I wrote the script for the pilot and during our pitch to the BBC, I got some praise for the script too.
Then of course we actually got commissioned and delved deep into the characters and story and Becky came on board. She then helped us rewrite what I thought was already an amazing pilot script (uh! How little I knew) and we elevated it with dance and music and much more.
And of course our animation team under the leadership of Nandita Jain, Jamie Teehan and Charlotte Kieran took it to the next level.
Click here to subscribe to Nikhil & Jay channel.
But now to the second backstory - the pilot I wrote for the first time and second time was inspired by the story I had written in the Nikhil & Jay book series (illustrated by Soofiya, published by OtterBarry Books) - and if you read the story and watch the episode (I really hope you do), you will notice how the text on the page has to be much more dynamic and active on screen.
But you will also notice that the story has more details on the grandparents arriving, lots of details about board games and family rituals before delving into the story of the mango. But on screen, it’s much more quicker to get to the mango story so we can squeeze as much of the comedy juice as possible. From the simple song that Amma (the mum) and Ammamma (the grandma) sing, to the dance sequence in the middle to the juicy messy mango-eating in the end, it’s a riot of laughs.
If you’re a lover of story, this is also a case study in format - how young fiction stories need to ground the audience in the new world of Nikhil & Jay vs a TV-show with a title sequence which introduces the characters and the episode can delve straight into the story.
It’s also a case-study of how to adapt something from page to screen - from 750 words of a story that packed a lot of layers to a 11-minute episode of jokes, songs, fun and lots of mango juice, with Max the Cat shenanigans. Both have layers, both have different aspects of the storytelling highlighted, with different details layering them.
And back to mangoes - it is the season of mangoes. In the episode Ammamma (Grandma) holds up a mango in her palm and tells Nikhil & Jay that her mangoes are like the golden sunset of Chennai and that’s a total steal from how my mum shows us the mangoes from her garden on video calls,
And it is such a coincidence that the Mango episode got nominated for the award right in the middle of the mango season. And I’ve been eating mangoes right from our family garden in India as I celebrate the nomination.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our Nikhil & Jay Youtube channel.
And if you are in the UK you can watch it on BBC iPlayer here: the pilot episode Nikhil & Jay and the Messiest Mango
And you can buy the books here: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/nikhil-and-jay-series?
Did you watch the episode and read the story and compared them both? Share your reflections with me!