'D.I. Ray's Series Premiere Introduces a New Police Procedural Perspective

The newest member of Jed Mercutio’s Line of Duty police procedural dynasty has arrived. D.I. Ray, created and written by former Line of Duty star Maya Sondhi, is the summer’s latest mystery, though it’s been streaming on PBS Passport since February. The series is a by-the-books procedural except for one major detail: it stars Punjabi-Sikh actor Parminder Nagra and highlights both the internal and external conflicts of working as a woman of color in the police force.

“You never know with these types.”

With this comment about a South Asian suspect, the white Superintendent (Ian Puleston-Davies) of DI Rachita Ray’s police department illustrates the types of thinly veiled racist remarks that Ray hears daily from her colleagues. The series’ first episode takes its time introducing the characters and the mystery at the center of the series, which spans all four episodes. This is no mystery-of-the-week show, Ray has four episodes to sink her teeth into the case at hand.

But before she can get to that, the episode opens not with a thrilling crime investigation but with what is likely a quotidian experience for Ray: a man mistaking her for an employee at a grocery store where she is shopping while off-duty. Thus begins a series of microaggressions — from strangers, colleagues, and superiors — that Ray encounters throughout the episode, and prove that when compounded, microaggressions are anything but micro.