“Ray is a strong and tenacious police officer!”
PARMINDER NAGRA, GEMMA WHELAN AND MAANUV THIARA STAR IN A NEW POLICE DRAMA BROUGHT TO US BY THE BRAINS BEHIND LINE OF DUTY…
This exciting new crime thriller, stripped across four nights, is execproduced by Line Of Duty mastermind Jed Mercurio, and written by LOD star Maya Sondhi (PC Maneet Bindra).
We follow Leicester-born – now Birmingham-based – DI Rachita Ray (Parminder Nagra), a police officer who works alongside PS Tony Khatri (Maanuv Thiara) and gets promoted to join a homicide investigation, under the watchful eye of DCI Kerry Henderson (Gemma Whelan). While DI Ray is more than capable of the job, what she hasn’t factored in is having to confront her own personal conflict between her British identity and her South Asian heritage. Here, Parminder, Gemma and Maanuv tell Inside TV more about series DI Ray…
Hi, all! Tell us about your characters… Parminder DI Ray is at a moment in her life where she’s trying to figure out where she sits with everything. She’s very strong, tenacious and persistent – she never lets anything go.
Maanuv Tony is a nice antithesis to DI Ray: he’s completely in touch with his heritage, and he sees through the tough exterior that she puts up. He doesn’t take the job home with him, either – until it gets much more serious later in the story… Gemma DI Ray has been promoted very quickly to a new part of the force that my character, Kerry, feels she hasn’t quite earned yet. Of course, Kerry does eventually eat humble pie!
The exchanges between Rachita and Kerry are strong at times…
Gemma Well, women are strong, aren’t they? It’s really good to butt horns. But on set we got on so well… Parminder …and then we had to be horrible to each other!
Parminder and Maanuv, was it fun for you to film on home turf? Maanuv It was the best.
I grew up around the Midlands, so it was amazing seeing the cityscape of Birmingham on screen. You know, when you watch Succession, you see New York – and Birmingham looks exactly like that! Parminder Filming this in the Midlands was massive – and so was the fact that I was
allowed to keep my Leicester accent. I don’t often get that opportunity, so that was huge.
Is it true that you consulted with real police officers to learn the lingo? Parminder Yes, the things I found really hard to say were reeling off licence plates, or saying Yankee, Bravo, blah, blah. Doing all that took me way longer to memorise than some of the big speeches I had! Gemma Basically, you just say it fast, with conviction!