Line of Duty’s eagerly awaited return is expected to come next year
Adrian Dunbar said “we feel the pressure” as he looked ahead to the new series of Line of Duty(Image: Getty Images for The NTA’s)
Line of Duty star Adrian Dunbar has opened up on the “pressure” the cast of the hit BBC show are feeling as fans eagerly await the arrival of the new series.
Released in 2012, millions have tuned in to watch Line of Duty over the years, with the finale of the last series in 2021 reaching over 15 million viewers. The show follows the fictional AC-12, an anti-corruption team placed inside the police force to investigate shady officers. After series six’s exciting climax fans have been eagerly awaiting a new series which is expected to be released next year.
Adrian, who has won legions of fans for his portrayal of Superintendent Ted Hasting in the show, is heading back to Liverpool to direct the Beckett: Lieben 2026 Biennale which is taking place in the city next week.
Speaking to the ECHO about the upcoming series, he said: “I think it’s going to be very exciting. Jed Mercurio has written some fabulous twists and turns. Robert Carlyle, who’s playing our guest lead, is going to be fantastic. I’m really looking forward to it, keeping our fingers crossed that we can deliver something that the public really want and expect. We’ve got a big audience out there waiting for it, so fingers crossed.”
However, he admitted that trying to “deliver” for their army of viewers comes with a significant amount of “pressure”.
He said: “We do feel pressure because you meet people and they’ve all gone back and watched it again, or are going to watch it again and get up to speed, and kind of thinking to themselves, ‘Where is this next series going to start from?’ So the closer we get to it coming out, the more pressure will build.”
While he can feel the pressure building, he is confident the Line of Duty crew will be able to deliver what fans expect. He continued: “The first thing you look to is the script, and the scripts are very, very good. And that’s down to Jed Mercurio, and he’s the one who’s got the most on the line, as it were. But we can rely on him to be really working hard on it and refining what exactly we need for this series.”
The end of the last series saw Supt Hastings forced into mandatory retirement as AC-12 underwent a restructure. But, he is still expected to feature prominently in series seven albeit in a different role.
Besides talking about Line of Duty, the star also looked back to his formative years and the important role Liverpool has played in his career.
Like many actors, Adrian honed his acting skills on stage, and it was while performing in Anne Devlin’s Ourselves Alone in Liverpool’s Playhouse in 1985 that he found himself living in the city. He said: “I stayed up on Huskisson Street with Beryl Williams for two months, and I got a real sense of the city and how resilient it was, because it was under a lot of pressure at that point. There seemed to be England, and then there seemed to be Liverpool, it seemed to be a place apart.
“There were a lot of guys going door to door trying to sell stuff just to make a few quid. You could see the people were resilient, that whatever was happening, they were going to get through it.
“It was tough, but also it was vibrant, it was still alive. We’d end up in Toxteth, in the Sierra Leone Club, or we’d be down around Chinatown, or we’d be in the Adelphi, drinking around the city. It was great, it still had a lot of vibrancy, but at the same time, it was terribly poor.”
The Irish star has become one of the most celebrated actors of his generation. In a career that spans across decades, Adrian has appeared on stage and screen as well as writing and directing his own work. His 1991 film Hear My Song was nominated for a BAFTA, while in more recent years he has gained further acclaim in both Line of Duty and Ridley as well as returning to his earlier stage career in Kiss Me, Kate in the West End.
