Indian Summers: Why the sun is setting on the period drama after season two

last updated 16 May 2016

Fans of the 1930s drama Indian Summers were left in mourning when its final episode aired last night, but critics are still complaining about its underwhelming storyline.

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The flaw of Indian Summers is that necessity requires the British characters to be "perfectly ghastly", says Jasper Rees at the Daily Telegraph. As a result, none of them are worth rooting for, with the possible exception of Ralph's conflicted sister, Alice (Jemima West): "You'd scarcely care if the whole pack of them were blown up by the big bomb that, it was revealed, was being prepared for them," he adds.

Set in 1932 during the British Raj, the series began with the Indian civil service's annual move to Shimla, in the foothills of the Himalayas, to escape the summer heat. Cynthia welcomed newcomers to the exclusively white Royal Shimla Club, but ripples of discontent about British rule could be felt among the local community and an assassination attempt was made on Ralph, the viceroy's private secretary, in the very first episode.

Ralph's sister Alice fell in love with young Parsi clerk Aafrin, who took the bullet intended for her brother. He survived and was given a life-changing promotion. Meanwhile, Cynthia matched up Ralph with an American visitor, Madeleine Mathers (Olivia Grant), but it emerged that he had a dark secret - a son, Adam, from a relationship with an Indian woman, Jaya (Hasina Haque), and they travelled to Shimla to see him.

Jaya was killed while she waited to meet Ralph in a secluded spot by a lake. Local Ramu Sood (Alyy Khan) was incriminated, but in the final episode, Ralph's servant killed himself and it turned out that he had killed Jaya in a moment of misplaced loyalty. In a bid to cover his own back, Ralph signed off on Sood's execution and let him hang, despite telling Aafrin he would try to have him freed. Disillusioned, Aafrin joined the revolution and offered to act as a double agent.

Episode six looks likely to focus on Jaya, the homeless mother of Adam who was hit by a train in the first episode. She stabbed him in the hand last week, promising to "make your father see". The Guardian's Rhik Samadder says his money is on Ralph being the father, although he adds that at this point he suspects Ralph of "being behind everything from Lord Lucan's disappearance to The Murder on the Orient Express".

Alice is pretending to be a widow, but there are a few people in Simla threatening to expose her secret, including Sarah and a stranger who turns up in episode six. Andrew Allen at Cultbox says Alice's husband, who she apparently left in England, is "due a big arrival anytime soon". Or, he suggests, there could be a "far-fetched" twist on the cards. Ralph's wife-to-be Madeleine "visibly wrinkles in confusion as her fiancé affectionately plays with his sister's hair in a manner that's not purely sibling," says Allen. "Sure, Maddie has had all the hot and loud sex, but Mr Whelan has never given her as much carefully contained attention as he does his sister..."

The show has been renewed for an additional ten-episode series, to screen in 2016, despite its audience dropping from 2.9m on launch night to 1.3m yesterday.But the viewers who did tune in were tantalised with further hints of secrets and deceit among the British colonialists.Ralph, the private secretary to the Viceroy, was looking ever-shadier, after his would-be assassin committed suicide in prison. Police discovered that Aafrin, the Parsi junior clerk who took the bullet for Ralph, has stolen a crucial piece of falsified evidence linking the attacker to the independence movement. But Ralph is yet to let on that he knows.Meanwhile, Sarah, the wife of cheating missionary Dougie, has learned Alice's secret – that her husband is not dead.The storyline has taken a "decidedly Machiavellian turn", says Neela Debnath in The Independent, as "everyone seems to be rather shady and power-hungry". She describes Ralph as a "slippery" British imperialist. "We really don't know what he is up to – and it's exciting," she says.Debnath says she hopes that there will be more from the Asian cast in future episodes after the latest instalment became a "bit too Downton-esque" at times.But she concludes: "Every character in Indian Summers has an agenda – just what that might be remains uncertain but it's brilliant for viewers because we never know where this show will take us next. The one thing we can be sure of is that the English colonialists were a manipulative, backstabbing bunch."The Guardian's Rhik Samadder predicts that Ralph has an "empire state-sized" secret corroding his "calculating" brain. "Time for it to come out, please," he says.According to Channel 4, Ralph tries to "take advantage of divisions among the Indian communities" in next week's episode, while Sarah puts Alice in a "very difficult" position."Secrets are bursting open," says Andrew Allen at Cultbox, "and very soon, the writing will be on the wall."

Comparisons are already being made to other British dramas set in a similar period of India's history, including The Jewel in the Crown, the 1984 Granada series starring Art Malik and Tim Pigott-Smith. Creator Paul Rutman acknowledges that the story of the aristocracy at the height of empire has been told many times before, but says he wanted to shift the focus onto the ordinary people who made the administration tick and society swing.

Rutman tells GQ magazine that the Royal Shimla Club is "entirely fictional" but he has tried to reflect "some of the real fault lines that were running through the empire at that time". For example, the club has a sign outside saying "no dogs and no Indians". Rutman says there were a number of British clubs that would not allow Indians entry. In Shimla, the police often used the excuse of a cholera outbreak to raid homes, as portrayed in Indian Summers, he adds.

The only real-life character in the show is Lord Willingdon, the Viceroy of India, played by Game of Thrones actor Patrick Malahide. Rutman was inspired by a hoard of photos dating back to the Raj, which he was shown in a Darjeeling hotel. "These were photos of people like us, 80 years ago, having tea parties and trying to recreate this idea of England in an environment that wasn't England," he says.

Filming for Indian Summers took place on the Malaysian island of Penang. Executive producer Charlie Pattinson said he found Shimla too modernised and built up, while the monsoon season would have also posed problems for filming. "On literally the last day of my location scouting, having considered Sri Lanka and travelled around a lot of India, Singapore and Malaysia, I went up Penang Hill and breathed a sigh of relief," says Pattinson. "These properties were in a time warp: they absolutely summed up the idea of the British transporting their identity to a foreign land."

The Mail suggests that fans of Downton Abbey are likely to enjoy Indian Summers, describing it as "Downton goes to India", although it adds that the script bears "none of the clunking bits of 21st-century slang that sometimes mar Downton". But creator Rutman thinks it has similarities to Mad Men. "Like the world of Madison Avenue advertising in the Sixties, the British Raj is strange and unfamiliar, despite the fact it's such an integral part of our history, with attitudes to issues like race and empire which now seem totally alien," he says.

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