The critically acclaimed second series hit our screens in 2014 and realising they had a hit on their hands, the BBC commissioned two more that year. Having become the most popular drama series broadcast on BBC Two in the multi-channel era, Line of Duty made the jump to BBC One.
With filming for series five underway and fans eagerly anticipating the return of the AC-12 team in 2019, Line of Duty is widely recognised as the decade’s best British drama series.
The eight-part series adapts Bernardine Evaristo’s 2013 novel of the same name, following Barrington ‘Barry’ Jedidiah Walker. Barry has been married to Carmel for 50 years, who has begun to worry that there are other women on the side.
She’s right, in a way: he is having an affair, but not with a woman. Barry’s lover is his best friend of several years, Morris De La Roux. As they reach the end of their lives, Barry reckons with big decisions which could call his entire family’s future into question.
When Martyn and Rebecca up sticks for Glasgow, they think they’ve finally managed to escape London, two young children in tow. However, when new neighbour Jen makes unsettling remarks to Rebecca, the couple start to question if the fresh start is as idyllic as they first thought.
The show will star Martin Compston (Line of Duty) as Martyn, Anjli Mohindra (The Sarah Jane Adventures) as Rebecca and Solly McLeod as Jan (The Dead Don’t Hurt).
The book series began in 1987, with Knots & Crosses, and has since been adapted for screen, stage and radio.
The new six-part series takes place during Rebus’s days as a Detective Sergeant in Edinburgh. When his veteran brother Michael turns criminal, John finds his loyalty torn between family and the law.
Produced by Eleventh Hour Films for Swedish streaming service Viaplay, the show was filmed across Edinburgh and Glasgow in 2023.
When director Ashley Francis-Roy and his team set out to make To Catch a Copper, no one could have predicted what the finished series would look like, nor the cases that would emerge in Avon and Somerset Police’s Counter-Corruption Unit.
“We started with a huge amount of openness,” said Francis-Roy, following an RTS screening of episode 2 in Bristol, the city where many of the incidents in the three-part series took place.
Between the Lines is British television’s forgotten classic cop series. Its contemporaries – Cracker, Prime Suspect and Inspector Morse – are better known but, arguably, not as good.
Two decades before Jed Mercurio’s Line of Duty blew the lid off police corruption, Detective Superintendent Tony Clark (Neil Pearson), DI Harry Naylor (Tom Georgeson) and DS Maureen “Mo” Connell (Siobhan Redmond) from the Metropolitan Police’s Complaints Investigation Bureau were also hell-bent on nailing dodgy coppers.
The four-part thriller stars Tuppence Middleton (Downtown Abbey) and Martin Compston (Line of Duty) as estranged husband and wife Fi and Bram Lawson.
Based on Louise Candlish’s international best-selling novel, the series sees Fi arrive home one day to find strangers moving themselves into her house and that her husband has disappeared.
Deeply confused, she reflects upon the safe space where she and her family had built a life together, and begins to peel back the layers of her relationship.
Written by Ben Richards (The Tunnel) and directed by Zara Hayes (Poms), Showtrial follows Talitha Campbell (Celine Buckens, Warrior), the estranged daughter of a wealthy property developer who is charged with conspiring to murder fellow university student Hannah Ellis.
What does the job involve?
I have to keep on top of the talent and be knowledgeable about not just their abilities but also where they are in their working lives.
You need to know when an actor is trying to change their trajectory and doesn’t want to be sent the same scripts. I present my casting ideas to the creative team, usually the director, producer, executive producers and broadcaster.
Do you offer an opinion?
The six-part series stars Suranne Jones (Gentleman Jack), Rose Leslie (Downtown Abbey), Shaun Evans (Endeavour), Martin Compston (Line of Duty) and Paterson Joseph (Peep Show).
Jones and Leslie star as DCI Amy Silva and DS Kirsten Longacre, who lead an investigation into the mysterious disappearance of a Scottish fishing trawler and a death on-board the HMS Vigil submarine.
