The Pharmacist speaks to Amit Dhand, pharmacist and crime writer whose series of detective novels have been turned into a major new BBC drama, Virdee, which begins on Monday at 9pm.

Tell us, what can people expect from the show?

Virdee is a story about detective Harry Virdee – a maverick police officer obsessed with saving his city because he's not sure can save himself.

It’s a show which is full of pace, passion and power.

Pace, because he's got a lot going on in his personal life to do with his family and the fact that his brother-in-law is a drugs kingpin.

Passion, in his relationship with his wife, which is quite unique and under fire from his family.

And power, because he's in a struggle for the city of Bradford, between himself, his brother-in-law, and somebody who's doing bad things in Bradford.

The show explores complex issues around culture and religion. Was it important to you to bring South Asian representation to a national screen in Virdee?

Yes, representation is really key for me. I grew up in a time when Goodness Gracious Me was viral and comedians were viral, and South Asians had kind of got the comedy thing down, but no one had ever done drama.

And I was thinking, where’s our Bruce Willis? And then I thought, well, actually, I don't need to wait. I'll just do it. I'll try and create it myself.

It was really important to me to reflect cool, kick-ass South Asian characters. Harry Virdee is one, and Saima Virdee, his wife, is feisty, formidable.

And then you've got the conflict between generational divides, which we will all understand and everybody will know.

For me, it was really important to take the audience on a journey, so they don't just see a South Asian character, they just see Harry Virdee.

The actors are amazing. They've done such an amazing job. I'm so proud of them and so proud of the show.

Are you from Bradford yourself? Was it important to you to represent that community and set these stories in the city?

I've been here since I was two years old, and just never left. I'm a Bradford boy at heart.

I grew up behind the counter of a convenience store in the city. We had that convenience store for 35 years. We only sold it in 2017.

By then, I'd opened my own pharmacy. We’d get 300 people a day coming in.

You get to know a city, and you get to know its inhabitants with an intimacy that perhaps other people don't when you're in customer service, especially in the corner shop and a pharmacy.

It was really important to showcase the people of Bradford and the city of Bradford in a really positive way.

Is there anything that you can remember that you've drawn upon in this series?

So much. Just human interactions! Harry is a cop who, just by how somebody says hello, he knows what kind of mood they're in.

As a pharmacist, we know it's not always about what people say, it's about what they don't say, or their body language.

I owned my own business for 13 years, so I knew all my locals really well. And you do start to understand, just by the way, somebody says “good morning”, what kind of mood they're in, if they need a cup of tea.

I was really big on that. I love making people a cup of tea, because I learned it from my dad! In the corner shop, my mum would get really cross with him, and she'd be like, “Why do you keep making people cups of tea! They’re meant to be buying from us!” And I was the same in the pharmacy.

Do you see parallels between the detective profession and the sort of interactions that you had as a pharmacist?

Yes, I think the smartest detectives, of which Harry is definitely one, can analyse the situation just by looking at it.

How many times do we walk outside, see something across the street somewhere, and know what's going on? We can't hear the conversation, can we? We're intelligent enough to know what's going on. You do that in a pharmacy all the time.

For me, screenwriting is about telling stories in pictures. You can watch a show with the volume off, and still understand what's going on. That's great screenwriting. And I've tried to do that in my show.

How was that transition, from writing novels to adapting Virdee for the screen?

I think I've always been a screenwriter, I just did novels first!

My books are very visual. Virdee is a love story wrapped around a cop drama, because I know I can emotionally engage the audience with the family drama and then also give them the dopamine hit with the big set pieces and explosions and the murders and the car chases and all that kind of stuff. Am I going to want to make you cry, or am I going to make your heart race? When I'm writing, that's what's in my head.

Have you always written, even when you were working as a pharmacist?

Yes! I mean, if you spoke to my staff, I was always pottering around on the laptop and printing stuff out at the pharmacy.

I've written since I was about 12, but I became a pharmacist because I saw it as a way to enter healthcare, and still maintain my roots of being in a community environment, because our corner shop had been the centre of our community.

After working in hospital pharmacy for a while, I worked for Lloyds pharmacy for five years, and then I opened my own in 2011. Baptism of fire, 100-hour pharmacy!

I managed to transform that into one of the busiest pharmacies in West Yorkshire. We were doing 20,000 items when I sold it. It was an absolute monster, and it just came to a point where I was like, I can't do everything now, I’ve got the BBC thing going on. So I exited the market, and I miss it terribly.

Do you think community pharmacy has changed a lot since then?

I think the funding model is very well documented at the moment. And I think we are the forgotten heroes of the NHS.

The pandemic for me, really changed things. Generally our prescription downloads would be 300 a day, 350 if you were busy.

And on the night of the lockdown, there were 1,500 prescriptions downloaded. And we did a 24-hour shift. I did the night shift, and then my team came into the day shift, so I literally ran a 24-hour pharmacy for a week.

I put myself at risk because it was an independent and people needed their medication.

I did actually put my own health on the line because I had to provide medication other people. And I lost my mother to Covid.

I think, what people sometimes don't realise is that in community pharmacy, our doors never closed. And how can you socially distance in a small pharmacy? And even though all that was going on and the drama around personal stuff, I still made sure that pharmacy operated because people need their medication.

And I think stories like this are important, because the funding model at some point will need to reflect the fact that we go way above and beyond.

If the pharmacies closed down for one day, the world would stop.

Have you got any plans for a future pharmacist character or anything like that?

Just watch this space…

Virdee stars Staz Nair, Elizabeth Berrington, Tomi May and Aysha Kala. All episodes of Virdee are available to stream on BBC iPlayer from 6am from Monday 10 February and the first episode will air on BBC One at 9pm that evening.