Halal Designs is what their fashion store is called and conservative women’s clothing is what they claim to specialise in. But behind the facade, four women run a covert detective agency to expose cheating husbands in elite families. “These women help other women who are subjugated in any way,” director Asim Abbasi tells The Telegraph about his 10-episode production Churails over phone from the UK, where he is based .

What is Churails about?

It is about four women coming together to open a detective agency. The story evolves into how they try to bring about change in society. The issues handled in the show include misogyny, life in a patriarchal society, oppression of women irrespective of what class they come from.

Where is the story set?

Karachi is a prominent part of the story. But we wanted the show to have an anywhere kind of a feel. The way we have depicted Karachi, it can be any other city in Pakistan or India. That is the way we shot it. The show is 10 episodes of about 55 minutes each.

Which strata of society do these women belong to?

It’s a wide range. We have four leads. Two are from elite classes and two are underprivileged. They connect on this fundamental issue of treatment of women in a male-dominated society. The band of women they hire — transgenders, street criminals, prostitutes — are from the fringes of society who will not get jobs and opportunities otherwise. They are put together and trained to run the agency.

The lead cast of Churails Sourced by the Telegraph

The justice they mete out, does that involve physical violence?

They start off gathering information but the situations they are put in when their operations expand see them experiencing violence, to which they have to retaliate.

What made you think of such a strident theme? Are these based on real-life incidents?

None of the stories are directly lifted from newspapers. I came up with themes and storylines and then consulted newspapers as research. Often I found incidents that corroborated the story. The rest is imagination.

Can you talk about the cast of Churails?

Two of them are in their 30s, one in her late teens and another in her 40s. The women they hire are also from a varied age bracket. Sarwat Gilani has done a lot of TV and some films. She stars as Sara. Yasra Rizvi, also a film-maker and a poet in her own right, stars as Jugnoo. Nimra Boucher is another lead. The fourth lead is Meherbano. She is a young upcoming actor who plays Zubeida. I thought it was important to have central characters from diverse age groups, moving away from the mainstream practice of having the central characters from a particular age bracket. So we have prominent roles for women in their 40s.

Tell us about your earlier works.

This is my first web series. My previous work was a feature film, Cake, which released in 2018. It was a family drama about passage of time and parents growing old. It was a UK-Pakistan co-production. It released in India on a digital platform. (It was Pakistan’s entry in the best foreign language film at the Oscars in 2018.)

Any favourites in Bollywood?

I love Zoya Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap, Naseeruddin Shah… I am a big fan of Ayushmann Khurrana as well. I also like Dibakar Banerjee, who made Love Sex aur Dhokha.