Back in superpower times, cultural clashes took place on this side of the ocean and the joke was on the foreigners. Andy Kaufman memorably played Latka, an oddball Eastern European on “Taxi.” Bronson Pinchot was an émigré from a Greek-like island on “Perfect Strangers,” a sitcom about Balki Bartokomous, a guileless shepherd who collided with the American way of life.

“Outsourced,” which begins on Thursday on NBC and is based on a 2006 movie with the same title, reverses the premise to place an American naïf out of his depth in the developing world. Todd (Ben Rappaport) is a manager at Mid America Novelties in Kansas City, who is sent to Mumbai to run a call center staffed by Indian employees.

Like Balki, who loved and mangled American pop culture, Todd loves and mangles Indian civilization. On his first ride in an auto rickshaw, he is scared but exhilarated by the surging, heedless traffic, exclaiming, “It’s like Frogger, but with real people.” He is stunned to find a sacred cow wandering freely on the street and even more amazed to learn that his new employees don’t understand a reference to “The Bad News Bears.”

In other words, “Outsourced” could be perfectly awful.

The fact that it’s neither embarrassing nor deeply offensive — once it gets rolling, the show is actually quite charming — is a credit to the cast and the writers. The show mocks Todd’s blithe, well-meaning ignorance as much as it lampoons Indians trying to sell catalog items like fake vomit and “jiggle jugs.”