When 'Deli Boys' premiered on Hulu in 2025, the South Philly-set series blended crime and comedy with ease — and Season 2 is set to push its chaos, family tension, and stakes even further.
Created by Abdullah Saeed and executive produced by Michelle Nader, the show follows spoiled Pakistani American brothers Mir (Asif Ali) and Raj (Saagar Shaikh) as they discover their late father’s deli empire — and all of their inheritance — was actually a front for a drug operation.
Throughout the first season, the brothers survived FBI pressure, betrayals, rival gangs, and the revelation that someone close to them may have orchestrated their father’s murder. The finale then closed with a literal explosion that left their future hanging in the air. Now, with Season 2 on the horizon, the series looks ready to dive even deeper into the bedlam surrounding the Dar family and the increasingly dangerous world they’ve become a part of.
The trick for this new season for Nader (whose work can be seen on shows like ‘Two Broke Girls’ and ‘Dollface’) was balancing the core heart of the show with the raised stakes.
“You have to keep escalating things, but you want to keep the center—and that's the family,” explains Nader. “But the idea for this season was more money, more problems, and they have different ideas about how to use the money [and] how to launder the money. Obviously, that's a high-class problem, but it really tests the family. And I think that that's how we were able to really extend what we did in Season 1 and build into a Season 2 version… what happens when you're successful and what does it do to your family? It's like success, but shittier.”
Across its first season, the show balanced tones of outlandish humor with genuine emotional stakes, with Philly as a central character. Nader, a South Philly native, was drawn to the script from Saeed (a Temple graduate) and his use of Philly’s distinct humor and personality as a driving force for the plot.
“I grew up in Philly with a lot of criminals, with a lot of mobsters. So that was really the way I learned to be, which was that these guys were tough and they could be violent, but they were also super funny. They just code-switch, and just on a dime, they're very charming people,” Nader continues. “And so I think that that was sort of the idea… is that criminals don't think they're criminals — they just think they're working criminal activity to survive. We really baked in all of that into the action of what they did, which is criminal activity, but this is ultimately a comedy.”
And not only that, one of the things that makes 'Deli Boys' stand out from other crime comedies is how authentically it captures Philadelphia’s unpredictability. The city isn’t just a backdrop for the series — it fuels the show’s pacing, humor, and tension. When discussing the tone of the series and what makes its world feel so lived-in, Nader explained how the energy of the city became essential to shaping the show from the very beginning.
“It's a very unpredictable place in that you never know what's going to happen. Every block, every neighborhood has so many characters that you can't write. You just couldn't even believe these people are real people,” says Nader. “So we wanted to infuse that and that's what Abdullah did in the pilot. So I knew he understood it. I was able to jump into that and expand and play in that environment.”
While 'Deli Boys' thrives on chaos, betrayals, and criminal mishaps, Season 2 will also spend more time exploring the relationships underneath all the mayhem.
“I think the romance between Max Sugar (Fred Armisen) and Lucky (Poorna Jagannathan) is really surprising," finishes Nader. "It's sexy and it's emotional and it's got all the twists and turns and betrayals of a real love story. Seeing Lucky in that environment and in that space is, I think, what people are going to really enjoy.”
‘Deli Boys’ season 2 drops May 28 on Hulu.
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