Panta Mosleh’s Queer Interfaith Comedy ‘Pass the Salt’ Nabs Early Season 2 Renewal (Exclusive)

Panta Mosleh’s queer comedy Pass the Salt has earned a second season renewal before the first season kicks off next month.

Director and star Mosleh’s sitcom about a Muslim-Iranian grad student who falls in love with a young Jewish woman will debut on the OUTtv streamer on Nov. 2, with new episodes running to a finale on Dec. 7. Pass the Salt will also premiere on the Hollywood Suite streaming platform on Nov. 1, with development on the second season already underway.

The first season from PK Studio Productions centers on Mosleh as Parmiss Mansour, the grad student who falls for Nava (Amanda Wear) and deals with coming out, including to her overbearing traditional Muslim family.

“What excites me about Pass the Salt is getting to add a perspective we rarely get to see within the comedy landscape: a queer Middle Eastern and more specifically Persian woman at the center of a romantic comedy. At its heart, Pass the Salt is simply a love story about two women from different backgrounds trying to figure out their relationship, while navigating their families, expectations and some overbearing parents,” Mosleh tells The Hollywood Reporter.

The Pass the Salt leads — Mosleh, Wear, Adam Fox and Nathaniel Vass — will return for the second season, as will Valeh Ashraf, Moheb Jindran and Babak Haleky. Negotiations on international sales are underway, with initial deals expected shortly.

The early second season renewal for Pass the Salt follows the breakout success of another TV series set around Canadian queer life, Heated Rivalry, which streams in Canada on Crave and stateside on HBO Max in the U.S. market. More gay, lesbian and trans comedies and rom-coms have followed, including Slo Pitch, a mockumentary about a determined coach leading their ragtag LGBTQ+ softball team on and off the field and executive produced by Elliot Page that launched on Crave last month.

The second season renewal for Pass the Salt signals the boom in Canadian queer comedies and dramas are accelerating after earlier success with Sort Of, a CBC/HBO dramedy about a gender fluid millennial who is in transition in every aspect of their life, and Schitt’s Creek, the CBC/Netflix comedy where Dan Levy played a pansexual character.

“Canada has a remarkable history of allowing queer stories to be specific, while will being universal. Shows like Schitt’s Creek, Sort Of and now Heated Rivalry have shown that audiences will embrace Canadian queer stories when creators are given the freedom to tell them authentically,” Mosleh added.

Based in Vancouver and Los Angeles, Mosleh has directed series for Hallmark, A&E, Lifetime and TF1. Her acting credits include Christmas With the Singhs and 12 Dares of Christmas TV movies, the Cast Away The Clouds feature drama and The Last of Us drama.

Mosleh is represented by Paradigm and Pacific Artists Management.