The BBC has cancelled detective drama Virdee after just one series.
Game of Thrones star Staz Nair played the Bradford-based cop in the BBC adaptation of A A Dhand’s books, following detective Harry Virdee as he tracked down a killer targeting the area’s Asian community.
While fans hailed the February 2025 series as a “brilliant” watch, Virdee won’t be back for a second series.
A source told The Sun on Thursday (19 February) that the drama didn’t bring in the viewing figures that bosses were hoping for. “There was a lot of hope that Virdee would work because it was a deviation for a crime series and it did gain its own following,” they said.
“But the audience just didn’t come in sufficient numbers to make it a viable proposition for a second series.”
A spokesperson for the BBC told The Independent that the show averaged 3.3 million viewers during its run, adding: “We’d like to thank Amit Dhand and the Virdee team for a brilliant series, we are really proud of the show and we are talking to Amit about future projects.”
The series, based on Dhand’s Virdee novel City of Sinners, followed Nair’s detective as he tracked down the Bradford killer while also dealing with his Sikh family’s feelings about him marrying his Muslim wife Saima (played by Shameless’s Aysha Kala).
Midsomer Murders star Manjinder Virk, Goodness Gracious Me’s Kulvinder Ghir and Waterloo Road’s Elizabeth Berrington appeared in the show with Nair, who is best known for playing Qhono on Game of Thrones and William Dey in Supergirl.
The cancellation news will come as a blow to fans, who have described the BBC’s decision to discontinue Virdee as “madness”. One viewer wrote on X: “Virdee was brilliant and had so much potential the BBC should re show it prime time and see. Even only fools and horses didn’t hit the mark in its first series.”
Another claimed that they didn’t see much promotion for the show ahead of its debut in February last year, writing: “Virdee was pretty good. But it seems the BBC didn’t promote it that much, I saw it when it aired but I’m sure that's only because I noticed it on iPlayer.”
While Nair won’t be returning as Virdee, he is set to act alongside Paul Bettany in upcoming drama Harvest Moon, which follows a young boy who tries to reunite his separated parents during the pandemic.
