Forums: Indira Varma Board: Welcome to the TV.com Forums for Indira Varma

[Please note: This is your one and only spoiler alert. As most of the productions mentioned herein are at least 2+ years old, I'd half expect you to have seen them by now if you truly had any interest in them. If not, then pretend you're my ex-wife and conveniently forget anything I've written before viewing. You've been duly warned. - KJB, November 2011]

Poor Indira Varma! For some reason, she seems to have a lock on playing the exotic, beautiful female character who almost inevitably has something bad happen to her! I'd seen her here and there (since playing this sort of character usually means you don't get to survive an entire season on a TV series) but she really came to my notice in the premiere of the DOCTOR WHO spinoff, TORCHWOOD as, you guessed it, the team member who has something tragically nasty happen to her that sets up the story arc for the new girl on the team.

I then followed her to Idris Elba's completely unhinged cop drama, BBC's excellent LUTHER. I was genuinely shocked when they killed her off in that series but the death had such a profound effect on the series and its characters that it was worth it.

It was then that I started to notice that Varma had been popping up on US television for a while as well, making the odd guest appearance on series like LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT (as a world political figure not above matricide to further her ambitions) and a supporting lead role in HUMAN TARGET. Unfortunately, she joined that series as the wheels were flying off of it at warp speed.

Varma is always interesting to watch and her dark beauty is one of the things that keeps your eye trained on her when she's on-screen, something good directors use to their advantage when they've got her as part of their visual arsenal.

These, in a nutshell, are my thoughts on Indira Varma. I just happened across her old L&O:CI appearance and whilst confirming that is was indeed Varma (or, rather, her character) I'd just seen get her comeuppance, noticed that there were no entries whatsoever on the message board that TV.com had so graciously staked out for her so I thought I'd change that. I'd usually invoice an outlet for this work (since it is what I do for a living) but since it was my idea and I really didn't put any real work into it, I'll let you off this once. ;-)

-KJB, November 2011