Anyone thinking of watching this series via some sort of 'catch-up' facility (4oD or whatever it's called), allow me to whet your appetites with a helpful cut-out-and-keep Free Preview.
1. Around 99.99% of the English characters are untrustworthy, adulterous, duplicitous, neurotic, and yes, you've guessed it, RAYYYYYY-CIST.
2. There are only two English characters given any sort of sympathetic portrayal. One is a beautiful English Rose type who is being bullied by her nasty violent jealous English husband. But it's seemingly OK for her to be having it away with a young Indian man. That's GOOD adultery apparently.
(The other sympathetic English character is a doctor/teacher sort with a gruff Northern accent who had a bit of a crush on an Indian woman in Series One, but it's hard to warm to him because the actor usually plays villains like 'The Caddy' in 'Line of Duty').
The sub-text is : "Hurrah for these 1940s enlightened, progressive, mixed-race relationships". (All of them completely made-up of course).
3. There is one other British character who is portrayed as decent and principled. He's a Scottish Communist who hates the English people, and guess what, he's also gagging for one of the Indian girls. No Mrs, please don't t!tter, I'm not making this up.
4. All of the Indian characters are shown as Vibrant yet simultaneously downtrodden by the evil hated Brits. The Indian people are portrayed as noble and justified in their aims, tolerant, faultlessly polite, well educated and beautiful speakers of the hated English language.
5. In conclusion, it's the sort of wafer-thin politically-motivated tosh that Channel 4 has sadly come to specialise in. Surprisingly for Channel 4 they haven't parachuted any homosexual characters into it yet as far I can recall, but there was a lesbian kiss a few weeks back which sadly didn't get to the corset-ripping stage. An opportunity sadly missed.
OK, it's not a promising foretaste I admit. Still, the scenery's nice and the clothing looks good.