Line of duty: Has Ted met his match?
With the eagerly anticipated sixth series of BBC crime drama Line of Duty just started, could ‘newbie’ DCI Joanne Davidson be the undoing of the Superintendent and his team?
With his quirky, Northern-Irish turn of phrase, authoritative yet reassuring presence and aura of all-round decency, he’s a good egg is Superintendent Ted Hastings, copperin-chief of fictional police corruption unit, AC-12. The kind of fella you’d want at your side during an emergency or crime investigation. Ted is so highly regarded by viewers there was a nationwide sigh of relief when, at the end of series five and countless, heartin-the-mouth cliff hangers, he turned out not to be the high-ranking rogue officer known as ‘H’.
But our Ted’s not getting an easy ride this time around. Anything but. To briefly recap, new information
‘A lot of things in Ted’s working life have destabilised and this has affected the unit’
has come to light about a possible suspect in a year-long unsolved murder investigation and DCI Joanne Davidson is keen to bring the killer to justice. However, Davidson’s conduct has aroused suspicions and AC-12 are on the case.
“The investigation uncovers deeper and darker information,” says actor Adrian Dunbar who plays Ted Hastings. “It is a head wreck. A lot of things in
Ted’s working life have destabilised and this has affected the unit. I think he’s another year older but not another year wiser. There are implications for him.”
Of course, there are! You only have to look at Davidson (played by actress Kelly MacDonald) and her sneakily enigmatic expressions to see that. We reckon she’s his – and the department’s – most dangerous adversary yet and his days as AC-12 copper-in-charge could well be numbered.
“Ted is put through the wringer – particularly towards the end,” Adrian
continues. “Let’s face it, time is running out a bit for Ted – the age he is, whether he can stay in the force, is he useful
‘Ted is put through the wringer, particularly towards the end’
enough, is he a bit of a dinosaur? He’s up against quite a bit. His personal life is not in great shape, either.”
Adrian (62) doesn’t elaborate on what will be Ted’s fate by the end of this seven-part series, although he has remarked, somewhat quizzically, ‘Better Ted than dead’. He says writer Jed Mercurio tells himself and the rest of the cast, including Vicky McClure (DI Kate Fleming) and Martin Compston (DS Steve Arnott), as little as possible before and even during filming.
“We’re like mushrooms, we’re kept in the dark. So, when the scripts arrive, we devour them because we want to see, ‘Hey, are we still alive? Are we a baddie or a goody?’ Jed always keeps his cards very close to his chest.”
There was a pause in filming for six months. How does Adrian think Ted would handle a lockdown? “Not well,” he replies. “I know people who had a decent lockdown because they got to spend more time with their families, but of course Ted is on his own. I think he would really suffer as his work is everything to him and going into work in the morning, reminds him of who he is. “It gives him a sense of self-worth, gives him dignity and all those things that work gives us back. More so for Ted as he isn’t going home to his wife and he doesn’t have kids. He probably would have drunk a bit too much, slept in, not shaved. . . It would have been a big ask for Ted!”
As with many TV productions during this time, resuming filming under new, socially distanced rules and guidelines wasn’t easy. The sixth series started filming in Belfast last February. They got four weeks of work done before taking a break for lockdown which lasted until late summer. When they returned, they had to change their normal ways of working and instead of concentrating on one episode at a time – as they had always previously done – they sometimes found themselves filming a scene for one episode in the morning and for another episode, with a different director, in the afternoon.
However, there still managed to be some laughs on set. Vicky McClure, who plays DI Fleming says: “We have a laugh every day as we either forget our lines, fluff them or say something stupid. To be honest, it usually involves Adrian Dunbar!”
■ Line of Duty is on BBC1, Sundays, at 9pm