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.
“Home-grown story-telling – that’s something we do… like no other.” BBC Director-General Tim Davie made the claim while giving the Dan Gilbert Memorial Lecture at the Belfast Media Festival in mid-November.
One hundred years after the first BBC broadcast from Northern Ireland, Davie was launching the BBC Economic Impact Report for Northern Ireland. It revealed that the corporation invested £112m in the nation during 2023/24.
The thriller follows Lana Washington (Vicky McClure, Line of Duty), a bomb disposal operative or ‘expo’ doing her best to keep London safe. Also reprising their roles for the third series are Nabil Elouahabi (Blue Lights), Eric Shango (On The Edge), Maanuv Thiara (DI Ray) and Natalie Simpson (North Sea Connection).
The third series sees Lana and her team uncover a revenge plot targeting a string of people. The Bomb Disposal Squad work with the Police Counterterrorism Unit to find the culprit before they can take another life.
This summer, a quarter of a century after it first aired, BBC Four re-ran the first series of an unjustly forgotten British cop show. The Cops rarely makes the lists of best ever policiers, yet it’s as groundbreaking as The Sweeney, Prime Suspect, Between the Lines and Line of Duty.
Brighton-based indie Ricochet took home two trophies from the RTS Southern Television Awards in May.
Channel 5 show Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild (co-produced by Renegade) won the Factual Series prize, while UKTV channel Dave’s World’s Most Dangerous Roads picked up the award for Entertainment or Factual Entertainment Programme.
The ceremony, hosted by BBC South Today presenter David Allard and Meridian Tonight host Sangeeta Bhabra, took place at the Utilita Bowl, home of Hampshire Cricket.
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.
