A Hindi-speaking, white man is an anomaly. The last person, we remember, who made it look so easy on stage and screen, was late actor Tom Alter. It was then but natural that when the co-writers of the mini-series Afsos, which released on Amazon Prime in February, were looking at casting a white man for the role of Dr Goldfish, whose grasp over Hindi is a defining twist in the plot, they would be reminded of the veteran. "After searching a lot, when we did not get anything [a person who fit the bill], we thought Tom Alter would have been great for this role," Sourav Ghosh, who has co-written the Gulshan Devaiah-starrer mini-series, had later shared. "We decided to check if Tom Alter has any family." A Google search led them to his son Jamie Alter, who not known to many, had enjoyed a popular stint as funnyman Tinku Jiya, an anchor on a news satire show, Fake It India.

"Namaskar doston, main hoon apne ghar waalo ka lalla aur aapke jigar ka challa, Tinku Jiya," the opening lines, which Jamie rattled effortlessly on his show, won the writers over. "It was extremely overwhelming. Someone had seen me in a role that I had never envisioned myself in. But it had come at a perfect time," says Jamie, 39, over the phone from Noida.