Kill off one of AC-12? It is never far from my thoughts, reveals Line of Duty creator
Jed Mercurio ponders shock move ahead of return of hit police drama
LINE of Duty creator Jed Mercurio has admitted that not even AC-12’S golden trio are safe from being killed off.
The award-winning police drama, starring Adrian Dunbar, Martin Compston and Vicky McClure as an anti-corruption team on the hunt for ‘bent coppers’, returns to BBC One on Sunday night after a two-year break.
The sixth series will see the squad face their most ‘enigmatic adversary’ to date, DCI Joanne Davidson, played by Kelly Macdonald. The Scottish actress takes on the role of a senior investigating officer in an unsolved murder case.
Superintendent Ted Hastings, DS Steve Arnott and DI Kate Fleming, portrayed by Dunbar, Compston and Mcclure, are at the heart of the drama but Mercurio has teased that not even their characters are safe.
At a media Q&A, ahead of Sunday night’s opening episode, Mercurio was asked if he had ever considered killing off one of the three.
He replied: “Oh, it’s never far from my thoughts, honestly.
“We all get on brilliantly, but everybody knows that we’re serving something bigger than ourselves, which is Line Of Duty, and one of the things about the show is that nobody’s safe; it’s what keeps the audience on the edge of their seat. So, I know that it would be a sad day, but I think all the main cast realise that it’s possible, and we talk about it, we joke about it, and it’s something that no one would relish, but everybody would understand.”
Mercurio hasn’t shied away from getting rid of key characters since the show started in 2012. Memorable deaths (spoiler alert) have included DCI Tony Gates (Lennie James) walking out onto a motorway into the path of a lorry, the shooting of DI Lindsay Denton and AC-12 newcomer Georgia Trotman (Jessica Raine) getting thrown out of a hospital window. Other central characters have also been killed off.
Filming of the new series got under way in Belfast last year – its home since series two. But the Covid-19 pandemic meant the shoot had to be postponed for six months. Mercurio said there had been “a little brush” with the virus early in the shoot and that testing had made the situation “straightforward”.
But when community testing was withdrawn, he said he took the decision to shut down.
“We weren’t able to test our people, so therefore we didn’t know where the virus was, and I just phoned Simon (executive producer Simon Heath) and it was a very straightforward conversation,” he said.
“I just said, ‘I think we have to shut down’, and he said, ‘I agree, we’ve got to shut down’.
“So we filmed the rest of that day and, at the end of that day, I told the cast and crew that we were shutting down, and we then spent the summer waiting for a test and trace system to materialise and then came to the conclusion that we had to devise our own.”
On the future of the drama, Simon Heath said: “Let’s see how this season performs. We just enjoy making one season at a time.”
And when asked if he thought there was going to be a scene in series six that had the potential to break the internet, he replied: “Yes, I do.”
Line Of Duty returns to BBC One on Sunday, March 21