DI Ray, ITV, Monday at 9pm
ITV's new police drama explores racism through the eyes of gifted, but overlooked, police response officer Detective Inspector Rachita Ray.
While there are undercurrents of racism from the very beginning, including being mistaken for a sales assistant while doing her shopping, it is mostly the treatment she receives from colleagues and the policing institution that is at the core of the discrimination.
Events unfold quickly from the beginning of the first episode as the gutsy cop, played by Parminder Nagra of ER and Bend it Like Beckham fame, narrowly avoids death when a car almost ploughs into her.
She gives chase and despite a policeman being stabbed along the way, she manages to talk the assailant into dropping his weapon without further violence inflicted.
It's the moment she has been waiting for - after being passed over for promotion in the past - she receives a bravery accolade and finally secures a major step up the career ladder.
Congratulated by her superintendent, played by Ian Puleston-Davies, on her handling of the attack, she is offered a long-awaited place on the homicide squad.
But the congratulatory conversation is laced with questions about her background as the chief asks: 'Where are you from?'.
"Leicester," replies DI Ray, before he inevitably responds: "What’s your heritage?".
Perplexed by the questioning, she tells him that it is Punjab on her mother’s side and Bengal on her father's, adding "I think".
"You’re exactly what we need right now," he says, appearing pleased to have "ticked the right box".
But it soon emerges that the promotion is tainted by apparent tokenism and she realises she has been brought onto the case for her ethnicity rather than her skills and ability.
Assigned to the sensitively named 'Culturally Specific Homicide' team, DI Ray is immediately thrown into a murder investigation involving a young Muslim man, Imran Aziz, who was dating a Hindu girl.
It's not long before her team are quick to pin their murder on the 'Kapoor brothers', who appear to be the obvious culprits in a typical honour killing, underpinned by a business rivalry.
While her colleagues jump to conclusions, in particular her boss, making arrests with little information and not applying much scrutiny to the limited evidence available, DI Ray digs deeper.
But her investigation sees her drawn into the world of modern-day slavery and Birmingham’s organised crime rings.
Produced by Jed Mercurio, creator of Line Of Duty, and written Maya Sondhi who also starred in the hit BBC series, the first of four episodes of DI Ray has several twists and turns as well as a sub-plot of her secret relationship with a white police officer.
But the issues of racism run deep throughout, with obvious abuses on display - from DI Ray's white colleagues committing all the usual unconscious faux pas to the repeated questioning of her heritage.
Many times, however, the racism is indirect and low key in tone, such as when a police officer mixes her up with "another person of colour" when she hands her a lanyard for another Asian person.
But there's also DI Ray's own identity crisis between her British roots and her Asian heritage that is potentially linked to the racist undercurrent she feels she faces.
The drama is examining the continuing prejudices that still exist today, and most notably highlighting the issues that remain rife within the police force in England.
While it's no Line of Duty for me, it's a watchable police drama with an engaging murder hunt plot that explores the issue of racism in the workplace which is still apparent in many parts of society.
