Gurinder Chadha’s Beecham House, the Delhi Downton Abbey, evokes Raj nostalgia during ‘Indian summer’ in London

Beecham House is a six-part TV series, written and directed by Gurinder Chadha of Bend It Like Beckham fame.

It’s not only cricket that is driving the current Indian ubiquity in Britain – adding to the many Indian themes in museums, exhibitions and literary festivals is the new offering from the deep well of Raj nostalgia: a TV series called Beecham House from Sunday.

Beecham House poster on the London Underground.

Set in late 18th century India, when the East India Company was gnawing its way across the subcontinent, the lavish six-part ITV series is written and directed by Gurinder Chadha of Bend It Like Beckham fame, and stars Tom Bateman and Pallavi Sharda, among others.

June-July is the time when the elites of Delhi and Mumbai migrate to London, partly to escape the harsh summer back home, but also to partake in events such as the Khushwant Singh Literary festival and the just-concluded Jaipur Literature Festival.

It is the time when the UK-Indian cultural corridor is the busiest. This year, besides the elites, thousands of Indian supporters have travelled to various World Cup venues – and the Indian team has not disappointed them yet.

The mostly young cricket fans with little memory of colonial rule may be intrigued by giant-sized posters of ‘Beecham House’ across London, but director Chadha promises it will different from the previous Raj era dramas.

Set in 1795, the series depicting the life of the family headed by former soldier John Beecham has been filmed in locations that evoke memories of royal splendour: three in and around Jaipur (Chomu Palace, Samode Palace, Amer Fort) and Taj Mahal, besides England.

The series has already been likened to Downton Abbey, the popular British historical period drama set in the fictional Yorkshire county estate depicting the lives of the Crawley family and domestic servants in the pre-Edwardian era.

According to The Times, “On the face of it, ITV’s new Sunday sofa snuggle-up is a straightforward sell: you take the channel’s biggest recent hit, Downton Abbey, combine it with an acknowledged classic from its past, The Jewel in the Crown, and, faster than you can say perspiring punkawallah, you’ve got Beecham House, the Delhi Downton.”

But Chadha insists it is more than that. Portraying Indians’ lives on TV as equally important as white lives is “a flipping radical thing” in a country where school teachers are “frightened of telling the truth” about the British empire, she says.

“It’s an adventure and a love story. But – hopefully – if you’re open to it, a story about today. Because John is an immigrant, looking for a better life. And it’s about nationhood, so it has obvious connections with now,” Chadha told Radio Times.

Beecham House is the latest in a long tradition of pillaging the Raj era for events and themes around which British films, books and television series have been produced. These include classics such as Jewel In the Crown, A Passage to India, Heat and Dust and Gandhi.

The last major Raj era series on British television was Indian Summers, set in 1932 Shimla. Some called it ‘too PC and very dull’, others found it ‘too leisurely’, but most Britons slipped into collective Raj reverie when it was shown on Channel 4 in 2015.

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