Duty calls...
CRIME DRAMA LINE OF DUTY IS BACK FOR A FOURTH SERIES, IN ITS NEW HOME ON BBC1. KATE WHITING TALKS TO THE CAST, ALONG WITH CREATOR JED MERCURIO, ABOUT WHY IT’S SET TO BE BETTER THAN EVER
THE wait is almost over for the millions of Line Of Duty fans – and series four is set to be the best yet, promises actress Vicky McClure. “I think it’s the most complex case we’ve ever dealt with,” says Vicky, who plays DS Kate Fleming.
“The forensic side of it is going to give the audience a lot to play with.
“You won’t be able to get up and make a cup of tea, you are going to have to listen and pay attention to lots of small details. There’s an awful lot going on this year!”
Last year, Line Of Duty was crowned BBC2’s most successful series in 15 years, averaging 5.1 million viewers each week.
It’s now transferring to BBC1, and, with new guest stars and a few major storylines tied up, it’s the perfect time to start watching...
THE STORY SO FAR
A NEW twist on the standard police procedural drama, Line Of Duty follows anti-corruption unit AC-12, run by Kate, who was promoted at the end of season three, and colleagues Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) and DS Steve Arnott (Martin Compston).
In the explosive series finale, AC-12’s DI Matthew ‘Dot’ Cottan (Craig Parkinson) was finally exposed as ‘The Caddy’, the corrupt officer who’d been covering up historic child sex abuse.
The Caddy had already killed Keeley Hawes’ character DI Lindsay Denton, who’d been the target of an AC-12 investigation, and then tried to frame DS Arnott.
“Towards the end of the writing process, it was still in play that The Caddy would elude detection and point the finger at someone else,” writer Jed Mercurio explains of the decision to tie up the storyline that had stretched throughout the first three series.
“At the end of writing episode five, there was a possibility that The Caddy would have Steve killed and Lindsay would be blamed for it, but it landed Lindsay back where she was in series two, which was going to prison again. It felt too circular.”
A NEW CHAPTER
JED is excited to be starting “a new chapter”, and states: “I’m so grateful to the fans, to be in a position where an audience discusses your series and speculates on what might happen next, that’s really why you do this job.” In the first episode, we’re introduced to the main ‘antagonist’, DCI Roz Huntley, played by series newcomer Thandie Newton, who follows in the footsteps of Lennie James, Keeley Hawes and Daniel Mays as the focus of an AC-12 investigation.
Having been off work to bring up her children, she’s under pressure to climb back up the career ladder and crack a case called Operation Trapdoor, while coming up against Forensic Co-ordinator Tim Ifield (fellow newbie Jason Watkins).
“One of the higher aims of this series is to look at that theme of, what is truth? What is objective reality? If you weren’t in the room, and you didn’t witness what happened, how can you derive an understanding of what actually happened between those two people?” says Jed, who acknowledges his theme echoes the era of ‘fake news’ and post-truth.
“Over the years, I’ve been getting more and more exasperated at the lack of respect for facts and proper research, being able to tell the difference between an opinion and a fact. Unfortunately for the world, that has become a bigger issue now than it was.”
THE OLD HANDS
THE series is shot in Belfast, and Jed starts the conversation over plot lines with long-standing cast members Adrian, Vicky and Martin long before they get there.
“Often when I’m starting to construct the overarching story of the season, we’ll meet for a drink and I’ll get a sense if there’s something they want to delve into for their character.
“Usually that is Martin saying, ‘I want a gun’, and then the other two p**s themselves laughing and I say, ‘No, Vicky can have the gun’, and Martin gets the hump!”
As DS Fleming, Vicky has to go undercover, and her all-action turn in series three saw her tipped to play the next James Bond. But the truth is a little different for the actress.
“Last year, I’m under the bridge and say, ‘I’m too knackered to run’. Jed knew I would be knackered, and I delivered that with conviction every time!”
Martin says there’ll be some friction between Arnott and Fleming due to her promotion.
“Steve sort of owes everything to Kate, because she believed in him and wanted to get him out.
“Now they’re at a parity career-wise because they’re the same rank, but he’s also going for a promotion.
“He is a little smart-ass, he thinks he knows better than everybody, so it’s a lot of fun to play.”
“Yeah, he is unsettled that she’s now the same rank as him,” agrees Vicky. “We have quite a bit of fun playing around with that.”
THE NEWBIES
VICKY is thrilled to have Thandie Newton and Jason Watkins on board.
“I love the fact that the casting is never obvious,” she says.
“Thandie’s character is so far removed from her and any character we’ve seen her play.
“And the same with Jason, his character is quite unique, we can’t quite work him out. What great additions to the Line Of Duty family!” Thandie, who describes Vicky as “spellbinding”, says: “I had a call from my agent, who’s represented me since I was 17, and she said, ‘If you ever want to work on British television, this is the best thing you could ever do’. “I watched the third season with my husband, and we just could not stop, from episode to episode, it was phenomenal.”
FOCUS ON FORENSICS
AS DCI Roz Huntley, Thandi squares up to Forensic Co-ordinator Tim Ifield (Jason), who’s responsible for examining the whole series of crimes and murders that are suspected of being grouped together. “The heart of the series is forensics,” says Jason. “Ifield’s whole career is about facts and putting things together, making the right conclusions, based on evidence, but he maybe has his own agenda about how you get to that truth.” Thandie calls Ifield “a fly in the ointment”. “As a senior investigating officer, the facts are there, but then it’s knitting those facts together. It’s real Sherlock Holmes territory. “There’s a lot of truth in what she’s saying and trying to do, there is guess-work involved. “There’s no way of knowing absolutely,” she says. Jason adds: “We do have a set-to, me and Thandie, and you realise that you just have to let the gloves fly and get stuck in. “(You feel) the force of not only Thandie’s performance, but her character’s dilemma. She’s pretty formidable, Thandie, of course, I did think I wasn’t going to come out of it alive!”