BADGE of HONOUR

Parminder Nagra plays a brave Midlands cop in a new drama from the makers of Line of Duty

- CAREN CLARK

NEW CRIME DRAMA

DI Ray

Holiday Monday-Thursday, 9pm, ITV

Parminder Nagra became a household name when she played a football-obsessed, culturally conflicted British-Indian teenager in hit 2002 film Bend It Like Beckham. Twenty years on, she’s taking the lead role in a new Midlands-set crime drama from the makers of Line of Duty, about a detective facing her own identity crisis while investigating a homicide.

Produced by Jed Mercurio and written by Maya Sondhi, who played PC Bindra in Line of Duty, four-parter DI Ray stars Nagra as Birmingham-based police officer Rachita Ray, who achieves her dream of working in homicide after being commended for her bravery in dealing with a suspected terror attack.

UNCOMFORTABLE

However, DI Ray is still struggling to reconcile her British identity with her South-Asian heritage at home and at work, and finds herself wondering if her promotion is merely a token gesture because the case, the murder of an Asian man, is deemed ‘culturally sensitive’.