Deli Boys Review: Hulu’s Dark Comedy Hit Is Changing the Game for Pakistani Representation
Hulu is absolutely crushing it with diverse, sharp-witted comedies, and Deli Boys is another win. If you’re a fan of This Fool or Reservation Dogs, this one’s right up your alley—irreverent, chaotic, darkly hilarious, and deeply rooted in cultural authenticity.
Created by Abdullah Saeed and backed by the Onyx Collective, Deli Boys doesn’t just deliver laughs; it delivers a fresh, unpredictable take on legacy, survival, and what happens when two wildly unprepared brothers inherit their father’s very illegal empire.
What Deli Boys Is About—and Why It Works
The setup? Mir (Asif Ali) and Raj (Saagar Shaikh) are two nepo-babies coasting through life under the success of their father, Baba, a Pakistani-American deli tycoon. Or so they thought.
When Baba suddenly dies, the brothers find out he wasn’t just running a food empire—he was running a full-fledged drug operation. And now, they’re in way over their heads. Enter Lucky Auntie (Poorna Jagannathan), who is hands-down one of the best characters on TV right now—terrifying, razor-sharp, and absolutely done with these clueless boys.
Where Deli Boys shines is its commitment to chaos. The energy is relentless, the writing is razor-sharp, and the comedy is fast. Every episode plays out like a high-stakes disaster in the making, with Mir and Raj fumbling their way deeper into trouble. But while the humor is big and absurd, the show itself is incredibly intentional. It never loses sight of its characters, and it never turns them into caricatures.
The Shift in Pakistani Representation in Hollywood
For decades, Hollywood has dictated how Pakistanis—and by extension, South Asians—are perceived on screen. Before 9/11, Pakistani characters were largely absent from mainstream media, except when they were framed through an Orientalist lens—exotic, mysterious, or bound by rigid traditions. Films like The Beast (1988) and The Siege (1998) didn’t just depict Pakistanis as villains; they actively reinforced the idea of Pakistan as a hotbed of extremism, a place where chaos and violence were the norm.
Post-9/11, this reductive storytelling only intensified. Pakistani and Muslim characters became synonymous with terrorism, geopolitics, or oppression. Even in films that sought to tell “real” stories—like A Mighty Heart (2007)—Pakistani people were often shown through a Western perspective, serving as either the problem to be solved or as helpless background players in someone else’s narrative. The narrative of Pakistanis as either villains or victims persisted, limiting real, nuanced representation.
That’s what makes Deli Boys so important. This isn’t a show about Pakistanis being the “Other.” It’s not about terrorism, war, or rigid cultural binaries. Instead, it’s about two Pakistani-American brothers who are just trying to survive—in a way that is deeply specific, wildly chaotic, and hilariously relatable. It doesn’t sanitize their identity, but it also doesn’t make it their defining struggle. Mir and Raj aren’t reduced to one-dimensional representations of their heritage; they’re fully developed characters with messy personalities, bad decision-making skills, and an unexpected journey into the underworld of their father’s secret empire.
And for once, their story isn’t told through a white savior lens—it’s theirs, with all its absurdity and contradictions intact.
Representation That’s Organic, Not Performative
And let’s talk about representation—because Deli Boys is a win in more ways than one. It’s unapologetically Pakistani-American without being boxed in by that identity.
The show weaves in Urdu phrases, cultural references, and a whole lot of Pakistani food (seriously, you’ll be craving achaar by the end), but it never treats these elements as a gimmick. They’re just part of the world—authentic, organic, and lived-in. In a landscape where South Asian characters have too often been sidelined or reduced to stereotypes, Deli Boys is a breath of fresh air.
This is what shifting the narrative looks like. Deli Boys doesn’t just include Pakistani representation—it reclaims it. It takes characters who would have been relegated to sidekick roles (or worse, villains) in another era and puts them front and center in their own high-stakes, laugh-out-loud disaster. And, more importantly, it proves that authentic representation sells.
Alongside This Fool and Reservation Dogs, Hulu is setting a new standard—one where diversity isn’t just an afterthought, but the driving force behind some of the smartest, funniest, and most compelling shows on TV.
Final Verdict: Deli Boys Is a Must-Watch
That being said, I’m going to wrap up my Deli Boys review saying that the show has a lot going on. It’s balancing crime, comedy, family drama, and a coming-of-age story all at once. Sometimes it feels like it’s juggling too many things at once, but the sheer confidence in its execution makes it work—most of the time. My only hope is that people don’t reduce this show to “The Pakistani Sopranos” because that completely misses the point. Yes, it’s about crime, but it’s also about identity, loss, and figuring out who you are when everything you thought you knew is gone.
If Hulu keeps making shows like this—shows that take big swings, tell stories from underrepresented communities, and manage to be laugh-out-loud funny while doing it—then they’re setting a new gold standard. Deli Boys isn’t just good; it’s important. And if you haven’t started watching yet, what are you waiting for?
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