Indian Summers

This is Channel 4's new, lavish drama about the last years of the British Raj, in the tradition of Scott's 'Jewel in the Crown' and Forster's 'A Passage to India', but without their literary sources.  It's set in 1932 Simla, where the colonial ruling class retreated from the heat each summer.

Alice (Jemima West) is taking her baby by train to join her up-and-coming brother Ralph Whelan (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), having fled an adulterous husband.  Ralph meanwhile has a strange mentor in Cynthia Coffin (Julie Walters), the earthy widowed owner of the Simla Club (no dogs or Indians) who uses her servant to procure American heiress Madeleine Mathers (Olivia Grant) for him.  Ralph and Alice haven't seen each other since they were separated by boarding schools as children and are uneasy in their relationship.  The sense of entitlement of the British and the indolence this generates contrast sharply with the busy lives of the Dalal family, where son Aafrin (Nikesh Patel) is romancing a Hindu girl and trying to make his way in the Civil Service while his sisters are involving themselves in the growing call for home rule.  Two incidents - Hindustani graffiti over a portrait of the late Queen Victoria and an injured half-caste boy lying on a railway track - intrude on the struggles for survival and one-upmanship and are the portents of change.  Is Ralph a focus of discontent because of what he represents, or is it something more personal?

The trailers did this no favours, since the first, extra-long episode promises a rather more subtle drama than the likes of 'Downton'.  We were given a cursory introduction to the main actors ("You never told me you were Whelan's sister - he's Private Secretary to the Viceroy!" etc.) but there was enough sex and violence to be going on with and keep up the tension: brutality and illicit affairs seem to be the tropes of any Empire saga, and as 21st Century television, this doesn't shy away from exposing the moral rot that accompanied British rule on the Indian subcontinent.  Will it sustain a further 9 episodes?  Just possibly, and if the experience of the Himalayan foothills and bias cut dresses to a 30s soundtrack doesn't have you fiddling with the remote, you'll probably be intrigued enough to keep following along for now.