Virdee: 'It's my love letter to Bradford' says creator Amit Dhand

It launches on BBC One on Monday, nearly two decades after Dhand first created the character at the hub of the story. Still, a more fitting time for release there could not be than Bradford’s year in the spotlight.

The drama series follows Detective Harry Virdee, a dedicated cop who is estranged from his Sikh family after marrying a Muslim woman. Set and filmed in Bradford, the show takes viewers to the heart of the city, where a turf war is brewing and the police are losing their grip on gang rivalries.

The story is based on Dhand’s novels - mainly City of Sinners - and has been adapted for screen by the man himself.

“It’s kind of my love letter to the city the show,” says Dhand, creator, writer and executive producer. “I was like a child in a toy shop. I was like (where) can we go to (film)? Our locations were really hefty because I was really ambitious in trying to show as much of the city off as possible and I think we achieved that really well.”

Dhand spent his youth observing Bradford from behind the counter of the small convenience store where he grew up. In the shop was a video rental library and many of his days were filled by watching its offerings and making recommendations to the family’s customers.

“I’ve been obsessed with movies since I can remember,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to do something for screen.”

One particular film carried with it a defining moment on Dhand’s journey to becoming a writer. As a 12-year-old, he snuck downstairs one evening and started to watch The Silence of the Lambs whilst his father was out playing snooker and his mother had retired to bed.

“I was terrified,” he says. So much so that he ran to his mum’s room to confess what he had done. “There was no way I was sleeping alone that night.”

A few days later, curiosity got the better of him when he stumbled across the book at Bradford Central Library. “It was my first realisation that movies could be adapted from books, I didn’t know that before. I didn’t finish the movie but I did finish the book… I couldn’t stop reading it. And then I started writing the very next day.”

After school, Dhand qualified as a pharmacist, worked in London and travelled extensively. He then returned to Bradford to start his own pharmacy business and focus on the writing.

All his books were written whilst working full-time in pharmacy - and even the screenplay for Virdee. But when it came to production, the juggle became too hard to manage.

“I sold my pharmacy in 2023, August I left, after working as a pharmacist for 20 years,” he says.

“(It was) something I loved, something I still love, something I’m not saying I’m not going to go back to because I’ve only ever spent my life being behind the counter of either a convenience store or a pharmacy.

"It’s really all I know and I miss the customer interactions. You learn a lot when you serve 300 people a day…It’s a really interesting way to learn character development.”

There’s been lots of learning for Dhand in the creation of Virdee for screen. The beginnings go back to 2006, when he first began writing the character of Harry Virdee for a series of novels.

It wasn’t until a decade later that his first - Streets of Darkness - was published.

Set in Bradford and with a British-Asian detective as its central character, it brought a fresh perspective and received a lot of attention and acclaim.

There was talk pretty quickly of taking it to TV and comparisons were made at the time with the popular BBC drama Luther and HBO’s phenomenally successful series The Wire.

Dhand set about on a process of learning and development - “sort of my own television and film school,” he says. “I stopped reading novels and started reading screenplays - and I read a lot of screenplays.”

His first novel made a big impression and that was the one initially being considered for adaptation. But Dhand followed it up with more Harry Virdee books and it is the third that has been taken from paper to screen, for the six-part series.

“(A Harry Virdee) didn’t exist (when I started writing),” Dhand says. “I’d never seen him…I was like where’s our South Asian Bruce Willis? Where’s our kick-arse hero that’s uncompromising and unflinching? And he wasn’t there.

“I thought well someone’s going to do this at some point. I kept chipping away thinking someone would beat me to it and it would happen but it didn’t. The more I kept going, the more determined I was to be the person that would put a South Asian hero - both Harry and (his wife) Saima (Hyatt-Virdee) - in literature and on screen.”

Harry is played by Staz Nair, who has previously starred in the HBO series Game of Thrones. Aysha Kala, who made her television debut in Shameless, takes on Saima. It was an exciting prospect, she says, to have a show with a predominantly South Asian cast on the BBC.

“I just loved that we do touch on lots of cultural topics, but we also go into a world that is just completely heightened and exciting.”

“We can’t speak for the whole of British South Asian culture,” she adds. “But if somebody sees themselves in these characters then that’s amazing.”

Kala says she made a conscious decision not to read Dhand’s books, instead immersing herself in the Virdee world that the team were creating for television. The cast and crew were greeted with interest and open arms. On one occasion when filming in a residential property, Kala says they were given chai and biryani by the home owners.

“What I took away from being in Bradford is that people feel very proud to be from Bradford,” she says. “They really own it. They’re not just Yorkshire, they’re very much from Bradford. That was a really lovely thing to be a part of. Amit certainly has that pride and that’s why he wanted to do the show so passionately.”

On Thursday, Bradfordians gathered to celebrate, as the premiere for Virdee was held in the city. From the start, Dhand wanted the show to be a homegrown drama, one that showcased Bradford but also offered opportunities for local people to enter or progress in the industry.

“I didn’t want lots of people coming into the city from the outside, making the show and then leaving because that doesn’t give us anything to grow. I wanted the genesis of the show to be about developing home grown talents. I’m from Bradford and I’ve managed to learn and adapt to this business and skillset,” he says.

Danyal Ismail, who plays DS Amin, is one example of the Bradford talent that can be seen on screen - and there were many more Bradfordians who got involved in the production side too.

The show makers partnered with Bradford Council, West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Screen Yorkshire and the BBC to create Screen Academy Bradford, offering training programmes and employment pathways in the industry.

“We’ve left a legacy in Bradford with the Screen Academy,” Dhand says. “It’s also giving people from underrepresented communities the opportunity to explore a world that they very seldom have the opportunity to do, myself being one of them.”

Dhand is now working towards more adaptations of his books for screen in the future.

“We’ve called ourselves city of film for such a long time and I think it’s about truly believing that and actually building on it,” he says.

“I think this is the start of a journey, not only for me but also the city of Bradford to show that there is more content to be shot here.

"We are the youngest city in England and that means there is a huge amount of talent out there which is ready and willing to engage in learning, training, and developing skills.

"We must embrace that and we must wrap our arms around the youth and say this is a really good career, this is how it works, come on this journey with us.”

“There’s a lot of exciting stuff happening in the city of Bradford,” he adds. “I think it’s about time we took control and said we’ve always been city of culture and we will continue to be so after this year passes.”

Virdee is a Magical Society production in association with Screen Yorkshire. All episodes will be available to stream on BBC iPlayer from 6am on Monday. The first episode will air at 9pm on BBC One that evening with episodes continuing to air weekly.