Adrian: It’s my Duty to ration Teddisms
Fans love star’s lines in cop series
FANS are counting down the days until Line of Duty returns but it’s not just the action, plot twists and tension they’re looking forward to.
In the unsettling world of the hit BBC police drama it is difficult to tell a good cop from a bad one.
But what the show’s millions of fans love most are the quirky catchphrases of Supt Ted Hastings.
The sayings of the AC-12 anticorruption unit boss, played by Adrian Dunbar, have become so popular that the star has had to ration them during series six, which starts on March 21.
The exasperated Northern Irish officer is regularly heard to exclaim: “Mother of God.”
But among the favourite Teddisms are: “Now we’re sucking on diesel,” meaning we’re getting somewhere and
“I didn’t float up the Lagan in a bubble,” meaning I’m not stupid.
Adrian, 62, who came up with the colourful diesel expression, said: “I just chuck those things in. We do Q&As in Belfast and Jed [Mercurio, show boss] asks people: ‘Is there anything you want Ted to say?’.
“There is a new one this year, ‘Houl yer whisht’ which means stay quiet.
“I have to rein Jed back sometimes and say ‘I can’t just be saying this. I’ll have to cut two or three out of this scene as there are just too many of them’. So I ration them a bit.
“There are drinking games where someone drinks a pint every time you say Mother of God. That’s great, isn’t it?
You know you have made it when you have got a mural
ADRIAN DUNBAR ON TRIBUTE TO HIS ROLE
I would not do it any more but when I was 22 I loved it. “I have a mural in Belfast with ‘Floating up the Lagan in a bubble’ on it. You know you have made it when you have got a mural. It is always good when the quality is so good.
“Hopefully it will stay like that.”
Vicky McClure and Martin Compston will return with Adrian, alongside Shalom Brune-Franklin, new to AC-12.
Kelly Macdonald plays a senior investigating officer on an unsolved murder case whose suspicious conduct attracts AC-12’s attention.
Adrian said the new series is up there with the best. He told the Oxford Union:
“We keep raising the bar. It is down to Jed, of course, and the writing. He has consistently upped his game.”
“If it was in America after series two it would have been handed over to a team of writers and we would have done 13 episodes a year and very quickly we would have run out of steam.”
“But because we have had one writer who has decided to stay with it because he loves it and it is his baby, he has kept the standard up quite remarkably.”
He said he would like his friend Gary Oldman and Judi Dench to be guest stars in forthcoming series. He said: “That would be a laugh. There are so many actors like that we could get in.”
Adrian, born and bred in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, began acting in 1980 and his breakout role came in 1991 when he starred in BAFTA-nominated film, Hear My Song.