Virdee starts promisingly with an exciting murder case and a cultural family feud. Let the BBC make a crime series and little can go wrong. Well, a lot can go wrong, but in many series the combination of tension, current affairs, good actors and a strong script works excellently. A series that can also support this (for the time being) is Virdee, based on the book series by Amit Dhand.
Virdee is set in Bradford, a large multicultural city in West Yorkshire. Large British Asian communities live here, but there are many tensions between the different cultures and religions. This also emerges in several ways in the life of officer Harry Virdee (Staz Nair). For example, his Sikh family does not agree that he married a Muslim woman. At the same time, he is hunting a serial killer who is targeting the Asian community.
Virdee creates an interesting picture of British Asian communities
Virdee starts promisingly with that combination of tension and drama that is so characteristic of BBC crime series. The very first scene is a chase where the adrenaline rushes off the screen. What follows is on the one hand the search for a missing teenager and on the other hand the conflict between Harry and his family over his marriage. Aside from the chase scene, the first episode is pretty quiet, but it's still compelling to watch.
Personally, I found the family drama more interesting than the case of the missing teenager so far. This is mainly because this is a side of British society that you do not often see on television in this context. The relationships between the different communities are more complex than you might think. Especially Aysha Kala as Harry's wife Naima and Kulvinder Ghir as his father Ranjit are strong actors in this storyline who know how to raise the level.
The first episode ends very excitingly
The case surrounding the missing teenager also starts interestingly, but is (apart from a ferocious chase) still quite quiet. That's not a problem, because a first episode is intended to get to know the main characters better. The first episode ends with a very exciting cliffhanger in which the two storylines come together. I'm definitely curious about more.
With this first episode, Virdee gets off to a promising start. The actors do a good job, the tension is good and it shows an interesting portrait of the Sikh and Muslim communities. I'm very curious about the rest.
About the writer, Karzal
Mike (1995) has been a member of MySeries since 2016 and is mainly active on the English version of the site. Since 2018, he has been actively translating news articles, columns, reviews and basically everything that ends up on the Dutch site. The original articles, columns and reviews were actually written by others. During the week Mike can be found at IKEA, where he is a national systems specialist and occasionally also in the classroom to teach an English lesson. In addition, Mike logically enjoys watching series and has actually been spoon-fed this from an early age. The genre doesn't matter, there is a place for everything in the otherwise busy life.
