Ritu Arya says her casting in the split up spin-off The Split Up was “a real full-circle moment for me,” and the reaction fits a rare move on British TV. The six-part drama turns a family-run divorce practice into a new franchise entry, with a predominantly British Asian cast and creative team in place for 2026.
Ritu Arya and Sanjeev Bhaskar
Arya plays Aria Kishan in The Split Up, while Sanjeev Bhaskar plays Dhruv. Aria is a thirtysomething barrister set to take over the firm from her father and marry her long-term partner Neal, but the death of her mother forces Dhruv to alter his succession plans. Luke, a former fling of Aria’s, is then hired by her father as a senior associate, giving the series a built-in pressure point before the cases even start.
Bhaskar’s presence also carries its own history. In the late 90s, he created Goodness Gracious Me with Meera Syal and Anil Gupta, and Arya said she watched it as a child. She also described her own version, Goodness Gracious Me Kids, after her aunt captured it on home video, telling Bhaskar: “There I was, this lanky child hamming it up playing a guru. I thought Sanjeev might find it a bit funny, but he actually got quite emotional and gave me a huge hug. I think he was really moved to see what his show meant to the next generation.”
The Split Up and The Split
Three series of The Split ran after its 2018 launch, but Abi Morgan said by 2024 that the original had run its course. Her line — “How many times can I divorce and remarry them?” — is the clearest sign that The Split Up is not just more of the same. It keeps the divorce-law format and moves it into a new family, a new cast, and a different setting, which is the cleanest way to extend a franchise without pretending the old one had more runway than it did.
Morgan has also said the original idea sprang from a chance meeting with a female divorce lawyer, and that the aim was simply that “it should be a ride”. The new series keeps that weekly engine intact: each episode brings a fresh high-stakes case while the lawyers deal with their own schisms behind the scenes, so the business model is as much ensemble fracture as legal procedure. That structure is what makes the spin-off work as television, not nostalgia.
British Asian TV in 2026
The Split Up is described as revolutionary in its British Asian representation, and that claim is stronger when you look at the format rather than the label. Goodness Gracious Me was groundbreaking in its depiction of British Asian lives, yet only a handful of mainstream British TV series since then have matched that scale of visibility. Putting a predominantly British Asian cast and creative team at the centre of a high-profile divorce drama is the point.
For viewers, the practical takeaway is simple: this is a new six-part series built to stand on its own, not a direct continuation of the old family tree. The unresolved question is how closely The Split Up will connect to The Split beyond the shared premise of divorce lawyers, and that is exactly the gap the first episodes will have to close.
