A brand new season of Abish Mathew’s variety comedy show Son Of Abish premieres tonight on his YouTube channel. We caught up with the comedian earlier today to learn a little more about SoA’s latest iteration, what’s new and who to expect on the show!

This season, “it’s a live show first and camera is secondary,” Mathew explains. On tonight’s episode, you might see different stylistic choices in edits, including audience interactions. This season, the team is also focussing on ensuring that it feels more like a comedy variety show than a celebrity talk show.

“Since season one, Son of Abish has been a comedy variety show, with the talk show as an element of it—but that became the most viral part, especially midway where I was leaning into it,” Mathew says. “I think that is one major, major difference from previous seasons. I mean, it happened previous seasons as well but this time the entire team is leaning into it.”

Audience interactions will be one of the driving forces of Son of Abish season 9 with Mathew telling us that he’s looking to turn the camera on the patrons to his show. In fact, even before the show starts, there’s a crowd work session, in which the audience is treated to gifts and even get to play games with Mathew before he performs a short standup set. The crowd also gets a quick break where food and drink are served, warming them up before the big show!

The guests on tonight’s premiere will be actors from the neo-noir crime comedy thriller film Monica O My Darling Radhika Apte, Rajkummar Rao and director Vasan Bala.

As for comedy stars in the hot seat? Well, you can expect to see the likes of Prajakta Koli, Prashasti Singh, Pratik Gandhi, Sapan Verma, Shriya Pilgaonkar and Taapsee Pannu very soon!

Doubling down on his ambitions for the future of the show, Mathew has even refreshed the logline, which he gives his guests before they come for the show.

“I’ve told my guests that this season we won’t be doing ‘tell us your struggle’ stories or ‘tell us a fun story’ as much as we have some fun things to do while we talk about your stories,” he explains. “So, that way, we also evolve. Otherwise it becomes an interview show and the only way to move away from that is to slowly, slowly make pushes into making it variety. I can’t make a hard stand, but as much as possible we’ll manoeuvre like the river manoeuvres the mountains. Quote that, man! Quote that!”