Line of Duty

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.

Tracy Ifeachor (Quantico), James Frain (Star Trek: Discovery) and Sharon D Clarke (Rocks) have been cast, as well as Celine Buckens (Bridgerton), Kerr Logan (Game of Thrones), Lolita Chakrabarti (Vigil) and RTS Award-winner Sinéad Keenan (Little Boy Blue).

Everything is cryptic; minor characters from three series ago suddenly pop up on screen; and half of the dialogue is in acronyms. Yet viewers still can’t get enough of Jed Mercurio’s perplexing police procedural.

The series delights in plunging viewers into the darkness as they fumble to their own (often wrong) conclusions. Luckily for us, BBC Sounds’ companion podcast Obsessed with… Line of Duty is on hand to offer illumination.

The announcement via Twitter teased the bumper upcoming series, with Martin Compston’s character DS Steve Arnott asking his gaffer, Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar), for an extra episode.

The Serpent

BBC One

Release Date: New Year’s Day

The seventies-set international crime thriller The Serpent follows the true story of global efforts to capture Interpol’s most wanted man, the murderer Charles Sobhraj (Tahar Rahim, A Prophet).

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.

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.