MARTIN Compston has given an update on BBC drama Line Of Duty’s return – after one of his co-stars appeared to confirm a seventh series.
Actor Martin, 40 – who stars as DI Steve Arnott in the hugely popular police anti-corruption series – confessed that he and his co-stars would be “gutted” if show creator Jed Mercurio decided to kill off one of the main characters.
The AC-12 team is made up of Kate, Steve and Ted[/caption]
The AC-12 team is made up of Steve, DI Kate Fleming [Vicky McClure] and Superintendent Ted Hastings [Adrian Dunbar] and Martin says the Line Of Duty team are still very close.
He said: “I was with Jed last week, actually. He was out in LA doing a show he was working on, so he came to Vegas for the weekend, and I saw Vicky at The Brits on Saturday night.
“It’s just a case of… one of the great benefits of that show is that it’s given us great careers outside of it.
“I just started my new show yesterday [the thriller Red Eye], so I’m filming in London and Vicky’s working on Trigger Point.
“So we’re all working and there’s nothing coming soon. It will be a sad day when people stop asking about Line Of Duty. I appreciate that people want it back.”
The team better get their fingers out, though, because Superintendent Hastings is now 66 and should be retiring any day.
“Don’t f***ing say that to Ady if you talk to him!” says Martin, laughing his head off.
“To be fair, Ted Hastings has been retiring since series three. Believe me, there’s life in the old dog yet. He’s one of my great friends and he’s one of the most energetic people I know.”
In terms of a seventh series, the question on most fans’ lips is when it will come back, rather than if.
Christina Chong, who plays Steve’s love interest DI Nicky Rogerson, recently claimed she’d been approached about being in the seventh series.
She told the Mirror: “So I have been asked about a season, is it seven?
“Yeah. Potentially Nicola Rogerson will be back for season seven.”
But for all fans’ wishful thinking, Martin insists the show’s fate rests entirely in Jed’s hands.
He says: “I trust Jed implicitly and, if he decided it wasn’t right for it to come back, then so be it. If he decided to kill any of us off, we’d be gutted.
Martin admits any of them would be ‘gutted’ if show creator Jed decided to kill one of them off[/caption]
“We’d only do it for what’s best for the show, and if that was his decision, then that would be it.
“What’s great about it at the moment is we’re not planning on doing it, but it’s nice knowing it’s ‘out there’. That’s a lovely feeling.”
Does Martin think it might be easier to bring back the characters in a movie rather than a series, just like that other titan of BBC drama, Peaky Blinders?
He says: “In theory, it would be great to be in cinemas. But in practice, you’d need to do a five-part movie and release them all at the same time.
“You need a six-hour set up for our show, you need to find the story, it needs to last. You couldn’t do it in two hours. Line Of Duty’s series finales alone are usually 90 minutes long, and that’s just one out of six episodes.
“A movie for us just wouldn’t make sense. With Peaky Blinders, you can get away with it. But we need to set up the new characters, what’s going on, and dive into the new case. I just don’t think it would work.”
Drastic measures
But don’t expect Martin to be a Steve Arnott-type hero in his new drama. He stars in new Amazon Prime series Fear, which sees him play a man who initially seems like the perfect husband and father, but is, by the actor’s own reckoning, selfish at heart.
Just as viewers start to realise he isn’t quite the man they thought he was, we are introduced to the family’s downstairs neighbour, Jan, played by Solly McLeod.
He is a bit of a loner who develops feelings for Rebecca and, when they are not reciprocated, he takes drastic measures that both terrify and infuriate them.
Martin says: “It’s three episodes, but we pack a lot in because you have to keep people on the edge of their seat.
“What’s good is that there’s elements that everyone can relate to in it.
“It’s like if their neighbours moved their bins, or if they’re in your parking space, those things in your world can be massive to you.
“So when you throw the situation in there with the neighbour we have in Fear, you can see how things can spiral.
“It asks the question, ‘How would you react if your neighbour was doing things to you? How far would you go to protect your family?’.
“And you’d get wildly different answers from people. Even on set, we’d have arguments about it, and people had very different opinions.”
Fear sees Martin return to leading man status in a contemporary British drama set in the real world, just like his Line Of Duty days.
For the actor, it’s a stark, but welcome, contrast to his other Prime Video show, the fantasy thriller The Rig, which saw him appear in an ensemble cast over two series, the most recent of which dropped at the start of the year.
He says: “I’m really proud of Fear. I feel like I’ve been due a drama like this for a while. It’s great to be flitting around in fantasy worlds and doing all these big shows.
“But this is doing something really grounded that I think people can get their teeth into. I’m chuffed at how it’s turned out.”
All three episodes of Fear are available on Prime Video today
