ITV police drama DI Ray, which returns for a second series next month, boasts both a showrunner and a star of south Asian heritage. Surely that’s a first for a British primetime drama?

Creator, writer and executive producer Maya Sondhi is debating this question at ITV’s West London HQ with Parminder Nagra, who plays the show’s eponymous lead. Sondhi concludes: “It’s exciting either way. I didn’t grow up watching a South Asian female lead in shows. To have that now for my daughter and the younger generations shows we can do everything.”

Writing the character of DI Rachita Ray, says Sondhi, allows her to “explore identity” but “she’s also a really good police officer in her own right, and that’s the key [to the show]”.

“She’s chasing justice – at whatever cost,” chips in Nagra, who rose to fame as Jess in Bend It Like Beckham, the 2002 feature film that, along with the BBC sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, was a trailblazer in breaking south Asian talent. The much-loved movie was co-written, co-produced and directed by Gurinder Chadha. Nagra went on to star in US medical drama ER.

By the end of series one of DI Ray, Rachita Ray’s life, professional and private, is in tatters; having been cynically chosen to solve the murder of an Asian man to meet the “ethnic needs of the case”, she is then betrayed by her corrupt cop fiancé and suspended.

In series two, she returns to duty when the murder of a crime boss – “even stone cold, you wouldn’t cross him,” says loyal sidekick DS Clive Bottomley (Steve Oram) – risks igniting a gang war in Birmingham.

DI Ray is made by Jed Mercurio’s indie HTM Television. Sondhi starred in three series of his hit drama Line of Duty before, in typically brutal Mercurio fashion, her character, PC Maneet Bindra, had her throat slit.

Combining acting with writing, Sondhi had already penned episodes of The Kumars and EastEnders but “wanted to write about identity”. She explains: “When I talked to Jed, he said, ‘That’s quite niche, but if you wrap it up into something that everyone recognises, like a police procedural, then you can get to the people who watch those and then throw in other stuff.’ It felt like a very rich ground to explore.

“The trick with the second series was to keep the USP of the show – it’s dealing with identity, race and micro aggressions, but it’s not banging you over the head with it.”

Nagra was drawn to the role by the “pedigree” of the team behind it: “It’s rare when the stars align in that way in this profession. I wanted to play something gritty and be able to represent someone we don’t often see on our TV screens.”

I don’t sleep if I’m writing a script. My husband talks to me but I’m not hearing a word of it

The Leicester-born but now LA-based actor also enjoyed not having to change her accent. “I’ve done a cop show in the States with an American accent, but I can’t say ‘murder’… I just try and say it very quickly and hope nobody notices. Coming back to the UK, you can talk how you talk without having to put on the extra layer of an accent.”

She adds: “On a British set, there is a shorthand and humour. When you make a joke, people understand. By the time you’ve explained the joke [in the States], it’s not funny any more.”

Rachita Ray is a complex woman, calm on the surface, anything but below. Both the writing and Nagra’s performance favour nuance over tub-thumping. “Everything isn’t black and white,” she says. “No, it’s Asian,” says the rapier-quick Sondhi. “Very good – you should write,” ripostes Nagra, to general hilarity.

As you’d expect with a drama from the Mercurio stable, there are frequent twists and a rising body count. “Jed’s very hands-on and is on set a lot,” reveals Nagra. Sondhi adds: “He’s got a proper crime-drama brain. When he comes in with notes, it’s like putting a logic puzzle together. I’ve learned a lot… I’ve had to take out texture for [the benefit] of the plot. I got upset about it, but I understand why now.

“You’ve got to keep people hooked. Now there’s so much stuff to watch that, if people aren’t hooked, they’ll go to something else. That’s what Jed does really well. I’d just have two actors talking in a room for ages – there’d be a lot of jokes but nothing would happen.”

DI Ray was shot in and around Birmingham last summer. After years of neglect, Britain’s second city is on the rise as a TV and film base. First came Steven Knight’s epic crime series Peaky Blinders. This month, his brainchild, Digbeth Loc. Studios, is due to open its doors to make the much anticipated Peaky Blinders feature film.

Sondhi was born and raised in Birmingham. “I left when I was 18 to come to London for drama school, but ‘home’ on my phone is my parents’ landline number – I still feel very connected to it. I’m very proud we’re getting to see more of Birmingham.”

For the six-part second series, Sarah Deane, the creator of Channel 5 drama Compulsion, pens two episodes. “She’s an amazing writer – a Liverpudlian, and she’s got a lot of the class stuff,” says Sondhi. “Birmingham and Liverpool, I think, are quite similar in terms of the mix of socio-economic backgrounds, so we had a shorthand immediately.”

Scripting TV drama can overwhelm, admits Sondhi. “People ask me how I do it with a young family, but it really focuses your mind because I’ve got [a certain] amount of time to get it done before I have to be mum… you just have to do it because people need scripts to work off.

“I don’t really sleep when I’m writing a script because I’m thinking about it constantly. It’s all-consuming and my husband has a hard time when I’m in the zone. He’s talking to me, but he knows I’m not listening to a word he’s saying – the food could be burning or there’s a child that needs a bum wiped.”

Not that acting is any easier, especially in DI Ray, reckons Nagra. “This show is hard to get any distance from – the character is always with you,” she says. “DI Ray is one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever had. On ER [with an ensemble cast], people were sharing the workload, and here I am in [virtually] every scene and she goes through the mill.”

Sondhi still acts, although more sparingly now. “I have to choose really carefully what acting jobs I go for – I can’t be away for too long because my children are very small,” she says. “I just did an episode of Grace, and it was so nice to be on set with no responsibility. It was like: ‘You dress me and put make-up on my face, we have a laugh, I get some lunch, I do my words, I go home.’ No school assemblies to watch, no exec producing – it was really refreshing.”

Will there be more DI Ray? “I’m already thinking about series three plots if it were to happen,” says Sondhi.  She adds: “As long as Parminder’s up for it… we’d be screwed if she wasn’t, because it’s called DI Ray!”

DI Ray series two is due to air on ITV1 in early October 2024.