AA DHAND is making history as the first British Asian crime writer whose novel is being turned into a six-part TV series by the BBC. And, unusually, the Yorkshire born and bred author has insisted on writing the screenplay himself so that no one “messes” with his story. The drama is called Virdee, after its rough diamond protagonist, Detective Chief Inspector Hardeep Virdee, who prefers to be known as “Harry” Virdee. The character of Virdee is to be played by Sacha Dhawan.
Virdee, set in the dark and mean streets of Bradford, is going to be very different from Endeavour or Inspector Morse. “It’s our time and it is well overdue,” Dhand declared defiantly. He hopes he will inspire a new generation of writers: “There are very few south Asian screen writers working in this industry and my objective with Virdee is to encourage others to try their hands at screen writing, producing and creating innovative content which smashes cliched stereotypes.” The first “A” in his initials is for Amit. What the second “A” stands for he wants to keep to himself. “The reason I call myself AA Dhand is because I don’t want people to assume I am writing about arranged marriages or community cohesion,” he explained. “If I walked into a bookshop where there were zero Asian crime writers, the immediate default is going to be ‘arranged marriage, terrorism, racism, community’. It’s my own unconscious bias but unconscious bias is a strong thing. Let’s go with AA Dhand.”
The BBC have not gone for the first two of Dhand’s novels in the Virdee chronicles, Streets of Darkness and Girl Zero, which came out in 2016 and 2017, but the third, City of Sinners, which was published a year later. In Eastern Eye’s Arts Culture & Theatre Awards (ACTA) in 2019, City of Sinners was nominated for a prize in the literature category. City of Sinners has a characteristically grim opening: “DCI Harry Virdee stared up the body. Suspended high in the air by a noose around her neck, she hung from the rafters of Bradford’s most beautiful bookshop.
She was naked except for a red headscarf wrapped around her face, the decorative detail glistening in the early morning gloom. The quiet was marred only by the stifled cries of the manager, who had already identified one of her members of staff, Usma Khan.” Although Virdee is Sikh, he is not very religious, but his wife, Saima, is a devout Muslim. They have been disowned by their respective families. Another complication is that some of Virdee’s close relatives are themselves involved in serious crime. Dhand told GG2 Power List: “Virdee will be the first BBC (crime) show, in fact the first of its kind in the western world to feature a predominantly all south Asian cast – and in a city like Bradford, that is important. It is true that we are under-represented in this industry and Vir dee aims to help redress that imbalance.” He said: “It has been hard journey to get Vir dee to screen but I believe that ‘failing forward’ is the key to being successful. We, as south Asian creatives, have a lot of unique stories to tell, ones which need to be told and we are now in a place where executives and commissioners have an appetite to explore these.” The road has not been easy, Dhand emphasised. “I started writing screenplays after initially being rejected by this industry but I have always been a firm believer that craft can be honed by dedication and perseverance.
To that effect, I stopped reading novels and started reading screenplays – anything I could get my hands on and studying them in real detail. I then wrote a speculative script, which sold competitively and that opened the door to me looking once again at Virdee. “I think the lesson here is that as a creative you should always back yourself and accept that there will be rejections but you have to keep writing and putting your work out there. As a novelist I was rejected for 10 years before I landed the Virdee series and on screen, it was five years of rejections. The point is always to fail forward, learn and grow as a creative.” There is a fourth Virdee novel, One Way Out, which came out in 2019, so there is plenty of raw material should the BBC want to commission a second series.
When Dhand first indicated he wanted to write crime fiction, “all I heard was, ‘No, it’s not possible. You know Asian authors write literary works of fiction. They win Booker Prizes. They write about India. Why don’t you write about India?’ I said I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to write commercial crime fiction, dark and edgy. I started writing in 2006. And I got published in 2016. I wrote 1.1 million unsuccessful words. I did it for 10 years without earning a single penny. I got 66 rejections. It’s a very, very, very, very difficult industry to crack. You have to believe in yourself.” For years he ran a pharmacy in Bradford but he sold the business in March 2023 to begin a new life as a full-time writer. “I’m a chaotic writer,” he admitted. “I write at nighttime when the kids are asleep.
I like to walk and drive around Bradford and find inspiration in how it looks, how it smells.” He acknowledged that “it is very, very, very unusual for an author to adapt their own work. This is so specific – this world, Bradford – that we struggled to find somebody who could adapt the books. In this world that we inhabit, there are not a lot of south Asian screenwriters. Even with (crime writers) Abir (Mukherjee) and Vaseem (Khan) I don’t think you could get 10 Asian crime writers in a room. If we tried, we might get six or seven. So I think I want ed to be the screenwriter, executive producer and show runner. I didn’t want to hand it over to somebody who would give Virdee an (Indian) accent or have some sort of cliche. I wanted to be involved heavily.” There is an additional dimension to the project. Some 40 or 50 “South Asian and white, working class kids” who could never have dreamt of pitching for television are being recruited to work on Virdee via the Screen Acade my Bradford and will be paid as well. Dhand set out his mission: “Not only are we making the show, but we want to leave a foot print for the future.” According to the BBC, “Virdee will be an essential part of the activities leading up to the 2025 Bradford City of Culture”.
