8 million viewers Line up for Duty

A TWO-YEAR absence from our screens left fans of police drama Line of Duty in a state of heightened expectation.

A record eight million watched the first episode of the fifth series on Sunday evening, making it the most popular programme of the year so far.

The BBC1 show trounced ITV1’s Victoria, which was watched by just 1.8million in the same 9pm time slot.

Its audience, which averaged 7.8million and peaked at eight million, was the highest for a single episode of the BBC series since it started in 2012.

It was up 2.8million on the first episode of the fourth series, shown in March 2017. Line of Duty’s return follows the success of writer Jed Mercurio’s other hit, Bodyguard, which drew a record-breaking 10.4million viewers for its finale last year.

Line of Duty’s series five opener, which was described by its star Martin Compston as ‘the scariest yet’, received largely glowing reviews.

The Daily Mail’s Jan Moir called the ‘thrilling’ opening episode ‘tightly plotted, skilfully produced and complete with a shocking death at the end’.

The new series saw the return of Compston as Detective Sergeant Steve Arnott, Vicky McClure as DS Kate Fleming and Adrian Dunbar as the boss of the AC-12 police anti-corruption squad, Superintendent Ted Hastings.

It also introduced This is England’s Stephen Graham and Silent Witness star Rochenda Sandall as the new villains John Corbett and Lisa McQueen.

The new series, which will continue attempts to uncover who the mysterious police mole ‘H’ is, featured a trademark shock twist from writer Mercurio – with a brutal attack on PC Maneet Bindra, played by Maya Sondhi, in the closing scenes in which she had her throat slashed.