Entertainment

Adrian Dunbar: It’s not looking good for Ted in new series of Line Of Duty

The police superintendent will come under suspicion.
The police superintendent will come under suspicion. The police superintendent will come under suspicion.

Adrian Dunbar has said his Line Of Duty character Superintendent Ted Hastings will “come under scrutiny” when the hit crime drama returns to television.

The actor hinted that the AC-12 chief will come under suspicion in the hunt for the mysterious corrupt police officer H.

He told ITV’s Lorraine: “It’s not looking good for Ted, it has to be said, it’s not looking good.

“He does come under scrutiny in the new series.”

A recent trailer for the programme showed H, the corrupt senior officer who was thought to be dead at the end of series four, is still in the picture.

The last episode, which aired in 2017, concluded with Hastings saying he was satisfied that Assistant Chief Constable Hilton was the one colluding with the late Dot Cottan, but it appears H may still be at large.

Dunbar said he learns what will happen with the show very slowly as he receives the scripts, penned by Bodyguard writer Jed Mercurio, “in a drip, drip way”.

Jed Mercurio comments
Jed Mercurio comments Jed Mercurio (Isabel Infantes/PA)

He added: “We get maybe the first block. It’s usually six episodes so we get the first block of three so we read and Vicky (McClure) is usually the first to read them, of course, and then she will text me and Martin (Compston) and say things like, ‘Oh my god, you won’t believe what’s happening to you in episode two!’

“She winds us up a bit. You get to know a bit and then you can speculate about what happens after that, and then we might get four and five then, but then six is always a bit fluid because I think Jed probably likes to see how things are progressing and what it’s looking like before he makes definite decisions about the last episode.

“You know basically what’s happening in it but there will be little subtle changes in it.”

Dunbar said there will definitely be a sixth series of the show but he has no idea if he will be included.

He said: “We are going to do series six so it’s going on beyond that. Whether we will all be in it we don’t know, but there will be a series six.

“What’s going to happen in it? Nobody knows.”

Line Of Duty returns to BBC One on Sunday at 9pm.