A A Dhand, the creator of BBC thriller Virdee and the first South Asian author to land a major UK publishing deal, has paid tribute to an unlikely hero when discussing the graft it has taken to get him to where he is today.
Dhand, who wrote the Harry Virdee source material and BBC show, revealed that the “repetitions” exhibited by the work of Arnold Schwarzenegger, whether that be in his bodybuilding, acting or politics, have taught him the value of “failing forwards.”
Speaking at the Creative Cities Convention (CCC) in his home city of Bradford, Dhand revealed it took him around a decade to land a publishing deal for the first book in the Harry Virdee series, and another five to get the BBC to agree to make it for the small screen.
“If you want it badly enough you will get there because no amount of ‘nos’ will stop you,” he said. “I’ve had 66 rejections to get to the novels. The BBC took five years [from pitch to greenlight] and I stepped away, we got another writer in and I sold two different shows in that gap. The only way to succeed in life is to have resilience and keep moving forward. I call it failing forward.”
Dhand used Schwarzenegger as a “kind of weird example” to illustrate his point. “He became the best bodybuilder in the world and that’s about repetitions, he talks about it a lot,” added Dhand. “When he got a script it was about repetitions. When he became the governor it was about repetitions.”
Dhand, who started his career as a pharmacist, became the first South Asian creative to land a commercial publishing deal in 2015 but since then he paid tribute to around a dozen South Asian authors who now have deals. “All those thousands and thousands of creatives out that there that are scrabbling around on laptops and creating things, well suddenly they think to themselves, ‘Oh s**t, there is a chance, I might actually be able to get there.’ And all of a sudden you have content which can then go to commissioners.”
Starring Staz Nair, Virdee is one of the BBC’s biggest drama launches of 2025. It follows the eponymous detective, disowned by his Sikh family for marrying Saima, who is Muslim. His personal life is in chaos and he must now hunt down a serial killer targeting the Asian community.
Dhand was speaking at the CCC in Bradford alongside host Mobeen Azhar, who is from nearby Huddersfield. Later, BBC Director General Tim Davie will address the convention.
