‘D.I. Ray’: Parminder Nagra Breaks Down ‘Satisfying’ Finale — Will There Be a Season 3?

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the D.I. Ray Season 2 finale “Enemy Within.”]

D.I. Ray ends its second season with a closed case, a satisfying conclusion to the storyline involving the vile group chat filled with other law enforcement officials, and a possible new love for the titular character (Parminder Nagra).

Rachita did take down Beardsmore (Ian Puleston-Davies), with help from Clive (Steve Oram) and eventually Henderson (Gemma Whelan), seems to be giving a romance with Patrick (Patrick Baladi) a try, and shares a sweet moment with her proud mom. Below, Nagra breaks down the finale and ponders the possibility of a third season.

With Clive’s help and then Henderson, Ray is able to take down Beardsmore which is so satisfying.

Parminder Nagra: So good. Honestly, Ian Puleston-Davies is just phenomenal. And when he blew up in that room, we felt like children being told off at school, the scene where he goes, “And you can F off.” And we were like, “Excuse me, how dare you talk to us like that!” It was incredibly satisfying. And because he’s so good, it was incredibly satisfying to play with him. But yeah, the nicest man, and he’s a comedian, so you’re just laughing the whole time in between scenes and then you have this very acerbic character. But yeah, very satisfying to take him down.

But going back a bit, why did she believe Clive when he insisted that he wasn’t like the others in the chat? Because she’s looking at his phone, he is in the chat and he’s like, no, I just can’t get out of it. And she does believe him.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I can’t be completely wrong about people. Is there anybody in this world that I can trust? [Laughs] I mean, it’s because he turns up to her apartment and then fesses up to his sort of stupidity of going along with something. But as an officer, why would you do that? She can’t fathom why he would do something like that. It’s politics, isn’t it? It’s like with any job that you have anywhere, any profession really, you might end up doing silly things because you still want to keep your job or you’re, I don’t know, two years away from a pension, you might not want to rock [the boat], you just want to make it to the end of your term. And so you’ll do whatever to get to the end.

But he’s not sticking to what morally he should be doing as an officer. And I think that’s where his character goes down this rabbit hole of doing that and thinks, “If I can just get to the end of this, I can retire and be on with my life.” And she pulls him [out of that], just like, “No, this is why you got into this. This is what is happening here and this is not right.” And by the way, that scene with him was just hilarious to play, turning up at her house all drunk, and it was pretty funny.

©HTM (DI RAY) Ltd

Have you heard anything about a Season 3? 

We’re just going to have to stay tuned. I haven’t just yet, so we’ll just have to watch this space and see what happens. But I think there’s legs. There’s legs in it.

Henderson is kind of going to be going for the superintendent position. How would Ray feel about that? They do clash.

Yeah. But she comes a little bit onto her side. She seems to back her eventually. There’s another character who’s climbing up the ladder and it starts to become about climbing up the ladder as opposed to doing what’s right. I don’t know. But I imagine if there was [a third season with that], it’d probably be some fireworks and Gemma’s good to do that with. So yeah, we’ll just have to see.

Things do seem to be looking up in Ray’s personal life though, with Patrick at the end there. Why might that work out?

Can you trust someone after two months of having just gone through that? Why was he bought in? Why is he, is he undercover? What is on Earth is going on?

Yeah, she trusted him pretty fast…

She trusted him pretty fast. And I think in Rachita’s mind, he seems like he’s pretty legit. So it would be interesting. And it’s just the sense of feeling like someone that’s on her level in the same job who understands all the things that they go through as officers, I think there’s that part of it that she feels like she can at least trust a bit. So there’s a bit a chink in her armor. It’s opened up a bit where she’s like, maybe I can try it. But she certainly gets very excited about him.

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What would you like to do if there’s a third season? What would you want to explore with Rachita?

I think I just want to build on what this season’s done really and especially the look of this season and just the noir aspect of it being a bit more grittier. Just even the places where we shot in Birmingham—although I’m saying that, and then we go to those areas in Birmingham, I’m like, why did you—we were on a night shoot in the middle of Birmingham and it’s really scary. I was trying to say to Jed [Mercurio, executive producer], “Why can’t we have a trip to Mykonos? Why can’t DI Ray and the gang…” Funnily enough, he didn’t fall for it. He’s like, “Now you’re just being silly.” I went, “Yeah, I was just trying to get a trip.” But I think I would just like to see it get a bit more grit. I just think the feel of what we’ve done with this season, if we continue along that same vein—knock on wood—we would be in good shape.

And what about for Rachita on and off the clock? I mean, I’d love to see more with her mom…

Yeah, they have a slightly strained relationship, her and her mom. But then the piece of advice that her mom gives her, you’re only one woman. It’s one woman against an establishment. But she’s incredibly proud of her and it’s incredibly emotional when that happens, when she says, “I’m really proud of you.” It’s also to see where Rachita’s has come from. I think maybe that’s something I would like to see a bit more of as well, of what makes her the way she is. Why does someone go into a profession that’s so high stakes like that when her parents do what they did for a living? So that’s always interesting to me to find out people’s backgrounds and why they’ve ended up in the jobs that they’ve ended up in.

How do you think she’s going to be approaching the job after everything? It’s been two really rough seasons…

It’s the worst place to work. [Laughs] I honestly don’t know. I would think it would make her more determined actually to stick to—what she’s done so far is really stuck to her guns and believe in what she should do and believe she’s right and wants to fight for the truth. And I think that’s essentially—Rachita’s ethos is like, I will always, no matter what, fight for the truth in a situation regardless of whatever the politics are. And if it means that people’s noses are going to get put out of joint, then so be it. That’s what’s going to have to happen. So I think, if she was to continue, that’s probably what would be happening, and maybe things would become more convoluted and, if Jed’s got anything to do with it, there’ll be even more twists and turns. I’m surprised he didn’t try to drown me this time, to be honest with you. [Laughs] But there’s always something. So he’ll always throw in a lot of curve balls, and I would see a lot more—it’s like that game Mario Kart where more and more stuff keeps getting thrown at you. I can imagine that’s probably what would keep happening to Rachita, but she will keep swiping it away.

D.I. Ray, PBS