Killed off? Only if it’s in the Line of Duty
HE narrowly avoided death after being thrown down a flight of stairs by a balaclava-wearing thug in BBC’s Line Of Duty.
However, Scottish actor Martin Compston – who plays intrepid hero Detective Sergeant Steve Arnott in the hit drama – says he ‘could not complain’ if writer Jed Mercurio decided to kill off his character.
Line of Duty’s last episode pulled in some 10.4million viewers and fans have been waiting anxiously for two years for the show’s return. The hiasaid
‘Best scripts of my working life’
was caused after Mercurio took time off to write the six-part Bodyguard series which starred Elderslie-born actor Richard Madden in the lead role.
Speaking to the Radio Times ahead of the eagerly awaited fifth series, Compston said: ‘I trust that Jed wouldn’t do anything just for shock’s sake.
‘If he decided it was time, I could not complain: I would have had four series – and made it into the fifth – of the best scripts of my working life.’
Line of Duty is renowned for its brutal treatment of characters, with those played by Keeley Hawes, Daniel Mays and Jason Watkins dispatched in sudden, bloody ways.
Greenock-born Compston he and his co-stars Adrian Dunbar and Vicky McClure did all they could before filming began to learn whether or not they would share a similar grisly fate.
He added: ‘During the four months of filming in Belfast, the three of us go for a curry in the evening with Jed at least three times a week.
‘So we can pick up a couple of hints of where his thinking is going then.
‘We all have our theories of how the whole thing is going to hang together because it’s such a big question.’
However, Compston is unable to share his own pet theory of whether DS Arnott will survive as othertus wise ‘I definitely wouldn’t be in the next series!’
The trailer for the forthcoming season features clips of the Balaclava Men, a notorious gang responsible for a series of robberies and killings.
Series five is set to focus on organised crime groups, a scourge which the National Crime Agency claims costs the UK economy around £37billion a year.