Series Creator Suk Pannu Talks 'Mrs. Sidhu Investigates' & Catering to Crime Solving

Mrs. Sidhu Investigates ended its first season Monday, October 9 (just in time for Canadian Thanksgiving!) with an episode that finds our intrepid caterer (played to perfection by Meera Syal) searching for a kidnapped boxer. Over the course of the season’s four episodes, Mrs. Sidhu, while preparing lattes and crab korma, has become an unlikely sleuth, much to the chagrin of her chosen partner-in-crime-solving, DCI Burton (Craig Parkinson). Juggling her directionless son Tez (Gurjeet Singh) and many suspects with a smile that belies her inner grit, Mrs. Sidhu is a crime-solving auntie extraordinaire. “She’s inverting the white savior,” says series creator and writer Suk Pannu.

Pannu, who also serves as one of the Acorn TV series’ executive producers, adapted the show from his popular BBC Four radio show of the same name that ran for two seasons in the U.K. “Radio is wonderful but tells a story in a different way,” he says. “TV, you want to see it all. It has to be on the surface. That was a learning curve for me to adapt these characters to a more visual format.”

Below Pannu chats with Telly Visions about the series and what might be possible if it’s renewed for a second season.

Telly Visions: Obviously, Mrs. Sidhu’s cooking is a huge part of the series. I put this in my review, but I really think there needs to be a cookbook tie-in to the series. All the food looks so delicious.

Suk Pannu: I think that would be such a great idea. It feels like it could be part of the family of the show. It would be cool to get a chef to be involved in it. It’s one of the things I love about writing and creating the show is that food is one of the layers that runs through it. It’s part of my culture and how we grew up, and she, as a character, is more aspirational. So she wants to do not just cooking but chefing. She wants to be doing more of this great cooking, more of this haute cuisine kind of thing, which is kind of working for her a little bit because she’s getting these great jobs now. I have a lot of fun. Some of those recipes are kind of made up like an Easternized version of a Christmas cake or something like that.

TV: Setting the show in a catering atmosphere gives you a lot of opportunities.

SP: One of the reasons is I worked in catering as a younger man. I love The Bear, those sorts of shows – it was kind of a world I knew reasonably well. She’s a woman in transition. She’s transforming herself. She’s been bereaved. Asian women were not going to go out there and do stuff. She’s turned that on its head. She’s used what she knows and inverted it. So it’s a really positive move for her.