Little Mosque on the Prairie

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Little Mosque on the Prairie
Little Mosque on the Prairie logo.
Genre	Comedy
Creator(s)	Zarqa Nawaz
Starring	Zaib Shaikh Carlo Rota Sheila McCarthy Sitara Hewitt Manoj Sood Arlene Duncan Debra McGrath Derek McGrath
Country of origin	Canada
No. of episodes	8 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	22 mins. (approx)
Broadcast
Original channel	CBC Television
Original run	January 9, 2007 – present
Links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Little Mosque on the Prairie is a Canadian sitcom on CBC Television. The series focuses on the Muslim population of the fictional rural prairie town of Mercy, Saskatchewan. The creator of the show is Zarqa Nawaz.

1 Title
2 Cast and personnel
3 Plot
4 History
5 Trivia
6 See also
7 References
- 7.1 General
- 7.2 Specific
8 External links

The title alludes to the classic American book and drama series, Little House on the Prairie. The two series are not related, aside from the use of a modified version of the title logo used for Little House.

The cast includes:

Zaib Shaikh - Amaar Rashid
Carlo Rota - Yasir Hamoudi
Sheila McCarthy - Sarah Hamoudi
Sitara Hewitt - Rayyan Hamoudi
Manoj Sood - Baber Saddiqui
Arlene Duncan - Fatima Dinssa
Derek McGrath - Rev. Duncan Magee
Debra McGrath - Mayor Ann Popowicz
Neil Crone - Fred Tupper

The first season was directed by Michael Kennedy.

This is the story of the Muslim population in the fictional town of Mercy, Saskatchewan. The show derives much of its humour from the interactions of the Muslims with the non-Muslim townspeople of Mercy and by the contrast of conservative Islamic views (held primarily by the characters of Baber and Fatima) with more liberal interpretations (as represented by Amaar and Rayyan).

The show premiered on Tuesday, January 9, 2007, at 8:30 p.m. It airs Wednesdays at 8:00 and repeats the following Monday at 9:00 (all times half an hour later in Newfoundland). The Monday, January 15 broadcast was a repeat of the pilot.

Unusually for a Canadian television series, Little Mosque received extensive advance publicity in international media, with profiles appearing in The New York Times, the Washington Times and the Houston Chronicle, as well as on CNN and the BBC.

The series premiere drew an audience of 2.1 million — an exceptionally strong rating for domestic programming in the Canadian television market, and on par with Canadian ratings for popular American series. By comparison, Corner Gas, one of the highest-rated Canadian TV shows, attracts just under a million and a half viewers for a typical episode. The second episode, airing against the second night of the much-anticipated season premiere of American Idol in most markets, had 1.2 million viewers, a sharp drop but still a high rating for a Canadian sitcom.

At the end of the show's season on 7 March 2007, the show attracted 1.1 million viewers, or an average of 1.2 million for the season. CBC Television has renewed the show for a second season which will likely begin in September 2007, though the number of episodes to be ordered has yet to be announced.^[1]

Although the show Little Mosque on the Prairie is set in the prairie, the show is mostly filmed in Ontario. Episode 1 and 2 were filmed in Regina, the rest of season 1 was filmed in the Toronto area.
Though the show focuses on an Islamic community, the entire cast is mostly Hindu or Sikh. The only Muslim in the cast is Zaib Shaikh, who plays the imam, Amaar.