MOTHER OF GOD! TED’S back

Line Of Duty’s on hold, but you can get your Adrian Dunbar fix as his thriller Blood returns...

Adrian Dunbar has been recognised as Line Of Duty’s Ted Hastings in all sorts of unlikely places, but this topped the lot. Enjoying a quiet stroll along a street in Sligo in the west of Ireland pre-lockdown, he thought his spectacles – not to mention the absence of Ted’s starched-white police shirt – would make him unrecognisable.

‘Then I heard this fella, collecting cash in a bucket to fight cancer, say in a broad Cockney accent, “Alright H?,”’ laughs the affable Ulsterman. He’s referring, of course, to the mysterious criminal mastermind the anti-corruption squad have been pursuing for five series in Line Of Duty, and who Ted’s colleagues believed to be him in the last one. ‘I’m not sure what he was doing so far from home, and I’m not sure how he recognised me as I don’t wear glasses in the show so they tend to throw people off the scent. But fair play, he did.’

Adrian, 61, has no problem being recognised as Superintendent Hastings though, in stark contrast to his character in Channel 5 thriller Blood, a man who’d love to live out his days in anonymity. Jim Hogan was the GP arrested for killing his wife Mary in the first series in 2018. He was found innocent at trial but was struck off. He went away on an extended holiday but is now back, first staying with daughter Fiona and her husband Paul before moving to a cottage in search of peace.

But mud has stuck. During episode one of the new series, Jim encounters a group of young ruffians. One of them, Kian, shouts, ‘You’re the one that killed his wife’, prompting a confrontation with the widower that threatens to end in violence. And Kian isn’t the only person not giving Jim the benefit of the doubt, even though his wife had begged him to kill her and end a life made wretched by motor neurone disease.

As Adrian explains, Garda cop Dez Breen is desperate to see him behind bars. ‘Breen reckons Jim got off the hook and that somewhere within him there is a dangerous person. So once Jim gets embroiled in what happens within the storyline in this new series, Dez is very keen to pursue him as the possible perpetrator. He thinks that wherever you have Jim you have problems. He is keen to “get him” as it were, feeling he missed a conviction the last time.’

Unlike series one, Jim is not directly involved in the criminal events at the heart of the plot. We see his daughter Fiona (Grainne Keenan) driving her car erratically and crashing it into a canal before fighting to

escape from the vehicle before she drowns. Fiona survives but the police make a dramatic discovery when they examine the sodden vehicle.

On the farm where Jim is renting his cottage, he discovers a drug-dealing operation in one of the barns, being run by Kian. Owen Mooney, the son of the farm’s owners, appears to be involved too. Does Jim spill the beans and risk muddying the waters with his new landlord and landlady?

Adrian admits he wasn’t expecting to reprise his role. He thought series one was a self-contained story. ‘I’d said goodbye to Jim. I didn’t know where we would pick it up, there was no natural springboard at the end of series one. But then it got very good viewing figures and the writer, Sophie Petzal, has come up with an excellent storyline for series two.’

Blood is a second TV triumph for Adrian, who for years walked in the shadows of James Nesbitt, a friend

Jim with Fiona and his son Michael. Left: Kian with Owen Mooney

and fellow Northern Irishman, and Neil Morrissey, a pal of Adrian’s from drama school in London. While James was enjoying success in Cold Feet and Neil in Men Behaving Badly, Adrian was highly respected and regularly employed on TV and in the theatre, but rarely made headlines.

That changed when Line Of Duty started to gain traction in 2014. The first series had a limited impact but the second was suddenly the most talked-about drama on TV.

Ted Hastings’ catchphrases – ‘Now we’re sucking diesel’, ‘Mother of God’, and ‘I didn’t float up the Lagan in a bubble’ – soon turned Adrian into a star at the age of 55. But then he had been warned success would come later in his career. ‘I was told I wouldn’t be successful until my 40s which, as a guy in my late teens, took the wind out of my sails. Although, in an odd way, it took the pressure off. I had time to get a good grounding in my profession. ‘I was ready for Line Of Duty when it came along, and not surpeople prised it was a hit. like to think there’s someone out there keeping everyone on the straight and narrow, catching bent coppers. And the stories are pretty good!’

Adrian, who’s been married to Australian actress Anna Nygh for 33 years and has a daughter, Madeleine, and stepson, Ted, has even become an unlikely sex symbol. He looks a little embarrassed when asked if the role has yielded any saucy fan mail.

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,’ he grins, shuffling a little. ‘But if women do like Ted, I suspect it’s because he’s so inept, so out of step with current trends. Maybe women are thinking, “I wish I could meet more fellas as unsophisticated as Ted.” Everyone’s become so empathetic and understanding these days, and you wouldn’t get that from Ted.’

Adrian is currently being denied the chance to play the unreconstructed cop for a sixth time: he had completed roughly a third of his filming on the next series before Covid-19 struck. But the lockdown means he won’t be forced into awkward situations where he might inadvertently give away a Line Of Duty plot secret.

Not that he’s likely to be caught out. ‘Whatever you say, say nothing because you would never want to spoil things for people,’ he smiles. ‘It’s imporgive tant not to the game away and I like the idea of being evasive but charming when people ask me what’s going to happen. In fact I really like those words: maybe they could be on my headstone. “Adrian Dunbar was an actor best known for playing evasive and charming.” Perfect!’