“Sort Of” is making its way to HBO Max. The upcoming Canadian comedy will premiere on the streamer this fall, a press release announced. “Sort Of” will make its North American debut at TIFF next month, and will launch on CBC Gem and CBC TV in Canada in autumn.
From creators Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo, the half-hour comedy follows a gender fluid millennial. Sabi Mehboob (Baig) “straddles various identities from sexy bartender at an LGBTQ bookstore/bar, to the youngest child in a large Pakistani family, to the de facto parent of a downtown hipster family,” the source summarizes. “Sabi feels like they’re in transition in every aspect of their life, from gender to love to sexuality to family to career. A coming-of-age story, ‘Sort Of’ exposes the labels we once poured ourselves into as no longer applicable…to anyone.”
Baig and Filippo serve as showrunners and exec producers on the series. Renuka Jeyapalan and Filippo direct, and Jenn Engels, Nelu Handa, and Ian Iqbal Rashid are among the writers. Jennifer Kawaja and Julia Sereny are EPs.
Baig previously penned the play “Acha Bacha,” which sees its queer Muslim protagonist’s cultural, familial, gender, and sexual identities collide. It was staged at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille in 2018.