'Unforgotten's Sanjeev Bhaskar to Head 'Inspector Singh Investigates'

Since the one-two punch of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, British mysteries have been one of the U.K.'s most popular exports in the entertainment business. The genre is so popular that PBS's Masterpiece had to create a separate franchise branch, Mystery!, to cover them all. From action-ride contemporary thrillers like Line of Duty to victorian rom-com mysteries like Miss Scarlet & The Duke, they are ratings gold. Naturally, BritBox has been leaning into them heavily since getting into the original programming game. Their latest will star the lead of a Masterpiece Mystery favorite, as Sanjeev Bhaskar has signed on to lead Inspector Singh Investigates.

The new series is based on mystery novel series of the same name written by Malaysian author Shamini Flint. The series began with the 2009 novel Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder and runs seven books, the last of which was published in 2016. Flint's titular detective is a misfit in the hypermasculine Singaporean police force culture: middle-aged, balding, overweight, disheveled, disorganized, and a bit of a klutz. However, his genius at finding and solving crimes means he has success wherever his superiors try and shunt him off.

Though Bhaskar became famous here in the states as the calmer, more sensitive half of the Unforgotten team alongside Nicola Walker's DCI Cassie Stuart, he initially started as a comedian, stealing scenes in Notting Hill and Scoop. He's best known for his work in U.K. TV comedies Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No. 42, where he starred alongside his eventual wife, Meera Syal.