Ripped

Mrs Sidhu Investigates has been created by Suk Pannu and spun off from his BBC Radio series.

Meera Syal brings Mrs Sidhu from the radio to the screen.

The first episode has Mrs Sidhu, a high class caterer watching a livestream from a gym where her niece Rani works.

Later than night there is a double murder and Rani becomes the main suspect.

To the chagrin of the investigating detective DCI Burton (Craig Parkinson.) The interfering Mrs Sidhu whose father was a police officer is out to clear Rani's name.

Mrs Sidhu finds that the gym has hidden secrets from false accounting, sexual jealousy, steroids and blackmail.

The inspiration of a nosey Indian caterer seems to be shows like Murder She Wrote. This is lighthearted and I found little depth in the mystery with a twist that looked tagged on and cumbersome.

Take Murder, She Wrote, replace a mystery writer with a chef, and you get Mrs Sidhu Investigates. Only without the charm or barely any well-known actors.

Mrs Sidhu only gets involved in the investigation because, by an astonishing coincidence, she starts a catering job at a gym the day after two murders occur. By an amazing coincidence, her "niece" happens to work there and, by an incredible coincidence, is the prime suspect.

By the following day, without doing any kind of Jessica Fletcher-type snooping or inconspicuous interrogation of the people involved, she presents the police inspector on the case with a dossier she's produced, with motives, alibis, and photographs of all the suspects... including, for some reason, the inspector himself!

And that's it. We never see her doing any actual investigation. And the resolution of the mystery is galloped through in such a garbled manner, it's hard to understand what the hell it was all about : someone was blackmailing someone who was blackmailing someone else with something that was only mentioned briefly in passing, and was somehow driven to kill for some vague reason.

The most irritating thing is at the finale, Mrs Sidhu tells the inspector "We solved our first case together". Why would she assume she's going to be solving any further cases with him... unless she has another relative who coincidentally happens to work for an obviously potential murder victim that she just happens to be catering for.

The performances were okay, but nothing special, and I don't know if this appeals enough to want to watch any further episodes.

The Shami Kebab Diablo is an incredibly spicy and totally indigestible kebab, invented by Dave Lister of Red Dwarf. To quote: "It's delicious, Kryten. De-smegging-licious. It's me own recipe, you know. Shami Kebab Diablo. It's beautiful, man, it's like eating molten lava! I cooked one once for Peterson, you know. He was in sick bay for a week, what a weed!"

The digestibility of Mrs Sidhu has to be compared very closely with that of the Shami Kebab Diablo, and I think Lister's creation would win.

They tried hard, but it was a random scattering of pretty unlikeable dimwit characters rushing in all directions, while the eponymous Indian chef lady just kept right on feeding them.

Yes, there was a murder plot somewhere in amongst it all, and we all knew that Mrs S would unravel it in the end, now didn't we?

It would have actually been improved had Kryten himself made an appearance, perhaps as the son of Mrs S, ready and waiting to take over all the cooking and cleaning while she did her detecting.

It felt slightly like the genre of 'McDonald and Dodds', or even 'Shakespeare and Hathaway', but without the cleverness. It simply fell so flat.

Let's be generous for all the cooking, and give it 4/10, OK?

DCI Burton is back on the job, investigating a double murder at a health spa, he is assisted by caterer Mrs Sidhu, who begins her own investigation.

I enjoyed it, very light, easy viewing, I tend to separate drama out into gritty, and Sunday teatime, this is very much the latter, and there's definitely a place for it.

I liked that Burton was irritated by her, and was dismissive and tried to get rid of her, the two leads worked very well together.

Mrs Sidhu is a fun character, she's nosy, intelligent, drives like a crazy person, and needs to seriously give her son some life lessons.

Wonderful to see Meera Syal leading a drama, she's been at the forefront of British drama for decades, I can't remember when she's played a title character, she should have, hopefully this is the start of something good. How on Earth can Meera be 62!!! Such a beautiful, wonderful, talented lady, I adore her.

How nice to see Craig Parkinson appearing in a lighter drama, I'm a real fan of his, but he's normally in the heavier, darker stuff, it made a refreshing change to see him in something like this.

Slough is well known for David Brent, I'm not sure Mrs Sidhu is going to have the same impact, which is a shame, this was a fine start.

8/10.