Mrs Sidhu Investigates – Series 1 DVD

Mrs Sidhu Invstigates is a light hearted, easy watch based on the hugely popular, hit BBC Radio 4 series of the same name.

The four-part Acorn TV Original drama created by Suk Pannu (The Kumars at No. 42) premiered on UKTV Drama and is now set to arrive on DVD and digital on the 30th of October 2023 courtesy of Acorn Media International.

The Mrs Sidhu Investigates Series One DVD also contains a mini featurette filmed during production which includes a conversation with Meera Syal on set.

Mrs Sidhu is played by Meera Syal (Yesterday, Goodness Gracious Me), a caterer from Slough with her very own brand of solving crime.

She’s trying to run her new catering business while also dealing with her son, Tez (Gurjeet Singh – Ackley Bridge) who is a bit of a typical lad living at his mums house.

The series has 4 episodes which follow the same journey of crime discovered, pondered, solved. It’s a very British Whodunnit, with a nice multicultural feel to it and although Syal plays an “aunty” character it avoids the racially dubious accents that other Pannu penned TV stuff has included. Hopefully we’ve progressed as a country enough to leave that in the past, never to return.

The episodes are all fun, and all have a different tone, they’re over an hour long so are like mini feature films in progression.

In “Ripped”, Syal is catering for a high end club (see what they did there) when things take an unexpected turn as two bodies are found in the spa. Mrs Sidhu’s niece Rani (Varada Sethu – Andor, Jurassic World Dominion) becomes the police’s number one suspect, so she takes it upon herself to start her own investigation and prove her innocence.

Inspector Burton, played by Craig Parkinson (Misfits, Grace) has no patience for her theories, so Mrs Sidhu has no choice but to dig deeper, uncovering plenty of secrets along the way…

She soon forms a (completely off the books) partnership with DCI Burton, as most programmes of this type have happen , and they become Batman and Robin levels of world’s greatest detective and sidekick.

In Episode 2, “Breaking Convention” they investigate a murder at a cosplay convention, this episode has a darker tone to it and feels more suspenseful than the first.

In “Killer App” it’s the same sort of thing at a tech company this one had a Black Mirror mystery feel to it.

And in the last episode “On The Ropes” a boxer gets kidnapped and, yes you guessed it, Sidhu is catering for them and so is there to sleuth her way through it.

I really enjoyed Mrs Sidhu Investigates, it’s “easy watching” light hearted with some genuine laughs and decent storylines in each episode.

The acting is strong throughout and the main characters are likeable and well written.

It has that feeling of classic shows like Diagnosis Murder where the main concept is pretty daft but it just works.

Mrs Sidhu Investigates is out on DVD today, 30th of October 2023 and is well worth picking up.