Jed Mercurio

ITV Covid drama Breathtaking details the NHS frontlines

Four years ago, the UK identified its first cases of a new, highly infectious disease. Within two months, Covid-19 had claimed the lives of thousands of people and the country found itself in an eerie lockdown.

Behind closed hospital doors, the scene was very different: it was one of chaos, as an unprepared and overwhelmed health service struggled to keep people alive.

Inside Jed Mercurio's new ITV thriller Trigger Point

Jed Mercurio is bringing his trademark high-octane thrills to ITV with a new drama set in a bomb disposal squad. Sunday-night viewers are currently being subjected to big bangs and nerve-shredding tension as a bombing campaign terrorises London.

Trigger Point stars Vicky McClure as an “expo”, a bomb disposal officer who takes the “long walk” towards a suspect device before attempting to defuse it.

The changing face of the TV political interview

John Whittingdale, MP, Minister of State for Media and Data, speaking at an RTS event said that in the 1980s ITV’s Brian Walden would devote all his hour-long programme to a set-piece interview with a senior politician.  

“Several times I helped Margaret Thatcher prepare for a Walden interview,” he recalled. “We don’t have that in-depth interview any longer.

Line of Duty will return to BBC One in early 2021

Vicky McClure, Martin Compston and Adrian Dunbar in line of Duty (credit: BBC)

Filming for the new series started up again in September and is still ongoing, with Adrian Dunbar, Vicky McClure and Martin Compston reprising their roles as detectives Superintendent Ted Hastings, DI Kate Fleming and DS Steve Arnott.

AC-12, the anti-corruption unit, will be met with a new, inscrutable adversary called DCI Joanne Davidson, played by Kelly Macdonald (Giri/Haji),

The series will pick up a year and a half after the closure of Operation Pear Tree, with Hastings returning to head up the unit after his exoneration at the end of series five.

An accidental career: Jed Mercurio headlines the RTS Midlands Careers Fair

Line of Duty creator Jed Mercurio decided he probably should learn to write – after he’d already penned a hit BBC drama series. “I did it backwards,” the former medic told the RTS Midlands Careers Fair 2020.

Mercurio had been a junior doctor working in Birmingham hospitals when he replied to an advert in the British Medical Journal. It had been placed by a production company looking for drama ideas.

Filming begins on Line of Duty series six

Series six of the police procedural will rejoin AC-12 a year and a half on from the closure of Operation Pear Tree, following the Unit in their investigation of Detective Chief Inspector Joanne Davidson (Kelly Macdonald), who is working on an unsolved murder case.

“DCI Joanne Davidson will prove the most enigmatic adversary AC-12 have ever faced,” said writer and showrunner Jed Mercurio.