Episode 3 of 'D.I. Ray' Picks Up the Pace As the Body Count Piles Up
After two episodes spent on red herrings, D.I. Ray’s third episode finally picks up the pace, as DI Rachita Ray has an opportunity to prove herself as the “Culturally Specific Homicide” she was brought on to investigate turns into something much more significant. The young man discovered alive in the shipping container is sent to the hospital to be placed under a medically induced coma as Ray heads back to the office, where she learns the other people in the container died of suffocation. They had Vietnamese currency in their pockets but no phones or IDs. The team suspects the people were being transported as part of a so-called “labor exchange program,” otherwise known as human trafficking.
Ray calls for an interpreter, brought in by PC Debs Knott (Demelza O’Sullivan), the same officer who handed Ray the wrong lanyard on her first day in Homicides. (It seems like yet more microaggressions, but it comes back later, so hold that thought.) Per Ray’s instructions, the interpreter, Min (Jan Le), poses as a person looking to immigrate from Vietnam to the UK for work on a social media site used by one of these “labor exchange programs.” She learns that the employer where they send the immigrants to work is called Dish2U. Ray, Min, and DC Carly Lake head to Dish2U, where people come to work through a dubious “agency” that controls their money and documents.
While in recent years, sensationalist true-crime media has painted human trafficking as sweet, innocent white women getting snatched in parking lots, it is refreshing (if tragic) to see this show highlight the lesser-known victims of trafficking: immigrants desperate for employment, preyed upon by people who want to exploit them for their labor.
