‘The butt of all jokes’: why TV needs to ditch stale immigrant stories

The lead character in United States of Al is a bumbling, one-dimensional cliche whose sole purpose is helping his white peers. How sad that shows like this still get made

It feels sad, amid a wave of such positive, nuanced, complex depictions of immigrants on TV, that United States of Al had to launch this month in the US.

How do you say: We're so happy to see you' in - what language do they speak in Afghanistan? Afghanistanish?" is the first line of the new show, about an American war veteran whose Afghan friend, Al, comes to live with him in the US. Chuck Lorre, the writer known for other big hits such as The Big Bang Theory, Roseanne and The Kominsky Method, knows that one of the country's two native languages is Pashto, not Afghanistanish" - he wrote it into the script in the next line - but what better way to signify how irrelevant you think another country is than writing in a joke for which the punchline is a question that could be answered by Google in a second?