The Indian Doctor is a charming period drama with a fine balance of hope, realism, and intrigue. Its story blends comedy, mystery, and medical drama in a tone and pace viewers who watch BBC One television shows will find familiar. This show is for those who love a variety of genres, especially period pieces and British television.
The show follows Dr. Prem Sharma (Sanjeev Bhaskar) and his wife Kamimi (Ayesha Dharker) who move to a South Wales coal-mining town in the 1960s as a part of a program for Indian doctors to work in Britain. The small town has mixed reactions at their arrival, and Kamimi is displeased as she thought they were moving to bustling London. Dr. Prema is intent on staying there, however, and soon gets involved with the locals and a medical mystery surrounding the coal mines that the town is built around.
For entertainment value, the characters are a highlight in the show and the majority of them are complex with a capacity to make mistakes and changes. Dr. Prema is charming, admirable, and sympathetically flawed. Kamimi is intelligent with high emotional intelligence and soft-hearted towards those she takes a liking towards. The locals all have deep roots in the community and with each other, and there is a kindness and nosiness that people from small towns can recognize.
As could be expected with the historical period and premise, there are a lot of comments on cultural exchanges within The Indian Doctor. It could be a useful way to explore the relationships between Britain and India in the 1960s, racial identity in a new country, and a lead in to discuss how racial and cultural ignorance is not inherent but taught through misunderstandings or lack of exposure. In the first few episodes especially, there is a lot of tongue-in-cheek playfulness and understanding when tackling these topics, and most of it is handled with some level of humor.
The Indian Doctor is a highly binge-friendly show with fifteen episodes at forty-five minutes in length. Each episode travels between slow and fast-paced scenes with mastery that draws you in and the time passes by without notice. Recommended.