The fantastic Mr. Abbasi – Part 1

For a director who has accomplished so much in just a few years, Asim Abbasi is among the most easy-going artists to interview. In a video chat lasting more than two hours, he is as forthcoming as he is likable. Abbasi fell on our radar with his feature film, Cake, released to critical acclaim in 2018 and has gone from strength to strength with each project since.

He wrote and directed all 10 episodes of Churails in 2020, followed by Count Abdulla (2023). Barzakh arrived in 2024 as a six-episode web series. He then directed one episode each from both seasons of The Famous Five. In 2025, he directed the first and last episode of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (season 2) and five episodes of The Other Bennet Sister, both of which have done exceedingly well with critics and audiences this year.

Talk to the man, however, and he has wonderful things to say about the Pakistani actors he has worked with and retains his belief in the power of collaboration. Even as many tried to pull down Barzakh, the series he wrote, directed and still holds closest to his heart, his pride in it is undiminished.

With back-to-back international successes and stints with the BBC and Netflix behind him, there is no trace of narcissism. The medium he uses, whether film or series, is about telling stories of the human condition and universal emotions and in a conservative society such as ours, bringing subjects discussed in hushed tones into the open. His aim is not to court controversy but to look at the world as it stands and how people self-identify without vilifying them, which is a remarkable feat to do in a country that is often at war with itself.

Here is Instep in conversation with one of the most versatile directors working today.

Instep: Let’s start with Barzakh. When I first saw it, I was completely drawn in by the story, the acting and its specific visual language. Great shows make you want to revisit them and catch something new each time. But it was pulled from YouTube after its last episode aired, with people, including certain industry names, speaking viciously about it. Did you anticipate such a disturbing reaction?

Asim Abbasi (AA): No, I did not anticipate this happening. I had wondered if some small group of people would object to the fact that I talk about things and ask people to absorb the work for its true essence and meaning rather than take everything on the surface. I think that becomes more prominent in episodes five and six and perhaps that would have been what people jumped on.

But by episode three, the drama had already started for what I call a no-case, because nothing actually happens. I remember very specifically how it started. One individual posted a still image on X (formerly Twitter), right before a particular moment in the show. Most people had not even seen it yet. Even though it had a big cast, people knew from the trailer that it had an arthouse vibe, so a lot of those reacting on X hadn’t actually watched it. It multiplied from there.

Television in the United Kingdom usually works in blocks. You rarely have one director doing an entire series. It’s more efficient to split it: one director shoots their block while another prepares, then the first moves into editing while the second continues production. Because of my availability and a bit of cast availability as well, I ended up directing the first and last episodes while the middle block was directed by Jill Robertson.” – Asim Abbasi explains why he ended up directing the first and last episode of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder in its second season

Then, of course, the usual suspects started making videos. I had not anticipated it at all. Churails was criticised for the monologue episode, but that didn’t have anything like this effect. Then people went back and started talking about the first scene as well. I genuinely couldn’t fully figure out what was happening. But I was also not too fazed by it. I was more disappointed for the actors because they had done fabulous work, they live in Pakistan and they have careers to protect. I started getting scared for them because you know how things can unravel.

There was no legal necessity to take it down. It was a decision we made because the snowball effect wasn’t ending and felt like it had the potential to become harmful. I was sitting in the UK at the time, which added to my guilt. The feeling, shared by the producers, was that we had done what we set out to do. All six episodes were out and hopefully people had seen them. If it was going to impact people in that way, we wouldn’t continue with it.

Barzakh is the show closest to my heart because it was really something I made for myself.

Instep: We tend to avoid difficult conversations as a society. Your work pushes against that. But with Barzakh, people latched onto one particular theme without realising it wasn’t there to create controversy.

AA: Yes, I agree we need to talk about things openly and without vitriol. Barzakh is one of those shows where I feel someday, somewhere, someone will discover it. Often, I meet someone who has seen it and can’t stop thinking about it. For me, that’s enough. It was never going to have mass appeal.

I didn’t want people to have a negative taste in their mouth and I didn’t want those who had worked on it, especially the actors, to suffer because they’re the faces people see. That part was saddening. But I was unperturbed in the sense that I had made it and for me that was the success.

Instep: Moving to your current work. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is on Netflix globally. Did they approach you, or did it come through the BBC? And how did you go from writing and directing your own material to helming an adaptation?

AA: It happened less through Netflix and more through the BBC. It’s actually a BBC original. Here in the UK, we get it on BBC iPlayer. Everywhere else, except Germany where it’s on ZDF and Australia where it’s on Stan, it’s on Netflix. It’s a co-commissioning arrangement where the BBC is the lead and Netflix came on board for international distribution, which is actually very common. The Other Bennet Sister works similarly, it is produced by the BBC in the UK, with BritBox holding the rights in the US and Canada.

I came to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder through Moonage, the production company, because I had already done The Famous Five for them. Those were 90-minute episodes, almost like television films. When they started adapting Holly Jackson’s trilogy, which gets progressively darker, I think they wanted someone who could bring a different visual language to season two. Season one has dark elements but also a youthful energy, season two becomes much darker, especially by episode six. They trusted me and wanted to see what I could bring visually. I didn’t pitch for it. Episode one and episode six arrangement happened partly by chance because when Moonage approached me, I had already agreed to do The Other Bennet Sister.

Instep: I thought Moonage was involved in both.

AA: No. The Other Bennet Sister is produced by Bad Wolf, the company behind Industry and Doctor Who, based in Cardiff. So I was a bit stuck and said I could only do two episodes. Television in the UK usually works in blocks. You rarely have one director doing an entire series. It’s more efficient to split it: one director shoots their block while another prepares, then the first moves into editing while the second continues production.

Because of my availability and a bit of cast availability as well, I ended up directing the first and last episodes while the middle block was directed by Jill Robertson.

It is a vastly different experience from writing and directing my own work. With Barzakh, Churails and Cake, there is more of a singular vision, though even those couldn’t exist without collaborators like Mo Azmi. In the UK, the difference is that I’m separated from the writer, which adds another layer. But ultimately, it’s still a group of people coming together to make the best possible show and if everyone shares that goal, you’re usually heading in the right direction.

I’ve found writers to be very open. Some can be protective of their work, but in my experience Sarah Quintrell who adapted Janice Hadlow’s The Other Bennet Sister and Holly Jackson, who adapted her own books for A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, have both been very collaborative, provided you respect the source material. Being a director for hire is a different experience from creating something from scratch, but the collaborative principle remains the same.

Instep: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder features a younger cast than anything you’ve done before and the story-telling itself is quite different. How did you find directing younger actors through material like that?

AA: I found them very collaborative and open, which you don’t always expect. Emma Myers comes from Wednesday, where she’s the second lead alongside Jenna Ortega and the whole cast had already worked together in season one. Coming in as a new director in season two, I wondered how those dynamics would play out. But they were so kind and open. With Emma, after the first week of rehearsals and shooting, it almost became shorthand between us. She had this ability to read what I wanted in a particular moment. I would just ask, “Do you remember where you are in the story?” and she’d immediately know. It became a very clear and quick process.

The younger actors are also very good at hitting their marks, which matters enormously given the way Mo and I shoot. There’s a lot of movement, because we like the frame to have a kind of dance to it. Emma and Asha Banks, who plays Cara in A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, had many scenes together in my block and we did a lot of them as long runners without many cuts.

For both projects, the source material was essential. I revisited Pride and

Prejudice, of course, but I also read Janice Hadlow’s original novel and Holly Jackson’s books before working from the scripts. I want as much research as possible. I love entering different worlds but I need to understand them completely. For The Other Bennet Sister, I also read extensively about the Lake District, which becomes central to the second half of the story. I wanted to know what it looked like, what Wordsworth was writing, because poetry is an important element of the narrative. All of that contributes to making the world feel authentic. I’m also heavily involved in giving script notes. Some suggestions make it through, some don’t, but for that process to work I need to know everything.

– Asim Abbasi describes his process when he is collaborating with other writers and directing/co-directing projects as opposed to his singular works where he is both writer and director

If you remember the last fight after the Calamity Party, for instance, it was done as one flowing piece with the camera moving close and pulling away again. What struck me was how instinctively they understood where the camera was and how to perform for it while keeping the emotional truth intact. With older actors, there’s sometimes a tendency to settle into habits. Mo Azmi and I are always pushing against that a little bit. Working with this cast, that instinctive understanding came very naturally.

Instep: The Other Bennet Sister has opened to fantastic reviews. Did you feel the need to recalibrate for a British audience, or were you always thinking globally?

AA: I didn’t find I had to adapt too much. Adaptability has become part of my practice across very different genres and stories. I’ve also now lived longer in Britain than in Pakistan growing up, so I’ve acquired a certain Britishness. At the same time, many of us in Pakistan grew up reading British literature, the boon and curse of colonialism. I read The Famous Five. I read Jane Austen. So it didn’t feel like too much of a leap.

Whenever I feel culturally out of my depth and none of us have actually experienced Regency England in 1814, it always comes back to emotional truth. There are certain themes I always gravitate towards such as dysfunctional families, grief, death and loss. Even in Churails, which is a thriller, all the women came from dysfunctional families. The genres change but I keep exploring similar emotional spaces. Barzakh, at its core, was about a man coming to terms with his own death.

With The Other Bennet Sister, what really interested me was the emotional foundation Sarah Quintrell had built into her writing. I directed the second block, episodes six through ten, which meant I got to direct the climax and those cathartic final moments for each character. As long as the emotional core is truthful, you can move between different stories, period dramas and thrillers while remaining grounded in the same reality.

Instep: You tackled a contemporary thriller and a period drama in the same year, both written by someone else. How did you prepare? Did you read the source novels?

AA: For both projects, the source material was essential. I revisited Pride and Prejudice, of course, but I also read Janice Hadlow’s original novel and Holly Jackson’s books before working from the scripts. I want as much research as possible. I love entering different worlds but I need to understand them completely.

For The Other Bennet Sister, I also read extensively about the Lake District, which becomes central to the second half of the story. I wanted to know what it looked like, what Wordsworth was writing, because poetry is an important element of the narrative. All of that contributes to making the world feel authentic. I’m also heavily involved in giving script notes. Some suggestions make it through, some don’t, but for that process to work I need to know everything.

With A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, one thing I felt wasn’t translating from the novel to an earlier draft of the scripts was the role technology played. Holly was always keen to preserve as much of the book as possible and I remember saying those elements needed to stay. We then explored ways of incorporating technology without constantly showing phones or computer screens.

With The Other Bennet Sister, there were small moments from the novel I loved and would suggest including. Sometimes they were added, sometimes not. But knowing the original books was invaluable throughout, to track what was being kept, what was left out and to make sure I was doing justice to both the source and the writer when I actually shot it.

– Read the second and final part of this interview in our next edition