Portraying Indians’ lives on TV as equally important as white lives is “a flipping radical thing”, the director of ITV’s new Sunday night drama, Beecham House, has said.
Bend it like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha’s new six-part series tells the story of how India became part of the British empire.
“The most exciting thing is simply having Indians in period costumes on primetime British TV – where their lives and loves are as important as their white counterparts. That’s a flipping radical thing,” she told Radio Times.
She hopes the series will be educational as well as entertaining – in a country where, Chadha says, schools are “frightened of telling the truth” about colonialism.
“Most children in British schools aren’t even told now that there was an empire, that the British ruled India,” she said, adding: “Of course it’s wrong.”
Chadha has made her career adapting English classics through a modern lens. In Bride and Prejudice, her 2004 adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic, she injected a Bollywood twist, adding a multicultural layer to a story that speaks to the complexities of family expectations.
Her work has been heralded as a breath of fresh air in a screen landscape that often leaves minority ethnic audiences in Britain and Hollywood feeling alienated. But Chadha says multicultural casting comes easy to her because her teams are diverse from the inside out.
“My buzz-phrase is ‘effortlessly diverse’. That’s what I do. My teams, both in front of and behind the camera, are a complete mixture. Diversity, for me, is a state of mind: it’s about how you see the world.
“Because I grew up in a very Indian household in a very English environment, I can jump both sides. That’s what my work is about,” she said.
Beecham House, which starts on 23 June, tells the story of John Beecham, played by Tom Bateman, who arrives in India in 1795 as a former employee of the East India Company – an institution that politically and commercially dominated India during British colonial rule.
“It’s an adventure and a love story. But – hopefully – if you’re open to it, a story about today. Because John is an immigrant, looking for a better life. And it’s about nationhood, so it has obvious connections with now,” said Chadha.
Chadha, who is used to making films for the big screen, spoke of the luxury – and challenges – of working on a six-part series.
“If I want to change one thing, it’s like: ‘How will that affect that bloody scene in episode six?’ So it’s like six times more what you would do in a movie,” she said.
As David Beckham’s retirement spawned a rash of headines such as “End it like Beckham”, Chadha spoke of her pride that the title still resonates after 17 years.
“Absolutely [I feel proud]. At having put that phrase into the vernacular. When he was done for driving too fast, it was ‘Speed it like Beckham’. When he does a lot of shopping, it’s ‘Spend it like Beckham’. I find it quite thrilling.”