Parminder Nagra trusts her instincts as an embattled copper in D.I. Ray

Chatting freely and laughing readily on a zoom call from London where she’s visiting family, Parminder Nagra is nothing like her title character in DI Ray. In the English crime drama, her homicide detective’s most frequent expression is a frown: not a woman inclined to sociable small talk.

Rachita Ray can be brusque and prickly, and she’s also doggedly dedicated to her work. Yet aside from her natural inclinations, it’s quickly established that she has good reason to be frowning. At the start of the police procedural’s four-episode first season (SBS on Demand, Britbox), she gets a promotion to the homicide division and arrives at the coveted post to discover that she’s been assigned to a case labelled a “CSH”, a culturally specific homicide.

So from the outset, series creator and writer Maya Sondhi weaves the issue of racial identity into her protagonist’s working life. Is Rachita, an English woman with South Asian heritage, a token appointment that owes more to her ethnicity than to her ability, a desirable face for a police force concerned with favourable optics? Or did she get the job because she’s a good cop whose skills have been recognised?

While the way in which the investigation unfolds leaves viewers in little doubt about Ray’s qualities as a policewoman, she’s surrounded by people who openly, subtly or inadvertently undermine and unsettle her. Her working environment is, if not openly hostile, certainly unwelcoming. “Rachita doesn’t really have many people that she can trust, to the point where I don’t know if she can even trust herself because of how she’s feeling,” says Nagra of her embattled character.

Sondhi’s police procedural entwines such issues with murder investigations. Rachita’s first case spirals into an increasingly tangled web of illegal activity, even though she’s under pressure to conclude quickly that the death is an “honour killing”. In a pattern repeated through two seasons of the drama – the second one drops on 24 July – Ray listens to instructions from her superiors and then does what she thinks is appropriate, a response that leads to charges of insubordination and recklessness.

Nagra, however, defends the headstrong heroine. “I think that the characters above Rachita, like DCI Henderson [Gemma Whelan] and Superintendent Beardsmore [Ian Puleston-Davies ], haven’t been on the street for a long time as they’ve been in admin roles, which happens in a lot of businesses. Once you’ve done your grassroots stuff and then moved to a more senior level, you’re playing the politics of what you think people want to hear. Rachita is on the ground and she has no desire to get to a level where she’s pushing paper and trying to please the people that need to be pleased. She’s doing her job and she wishes that they would back her up more. She’s following her instincts and, as in life, when something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.

“What I love about her is her reaction when someone asks her to do something and she just keeps going ‘Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, yes, understood. Yes, of course.’ And then she does whatever she feels is the right thing to do.”

Ray often acts alone, not only because she’s an isolated figure but because she’s following a lead that she feels compelled to chase down. She’ll seize an opportunity and charge into a potentially dangerous situation without waiting for backup because she’s fearful of losing a lead. Yet despite an impression of the detective racing around governed by her own rules, Sondhi says that Nagra brings “stillness, grace and elegance” to a role that, on the page, was more chaotic. “She’s more like a swan. It’s all going on underneath but she doesn’t show it on the surface.”