Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar says filming series six was ‘difficult’ due to pandemic

Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar has revealed filming series six of the BBC show was ‘difficult’ because they had to shoot the scenes out of sequence.

The actor, who plays Superintendent Ted Hastings, the senior investigating officer of AC-12, said at times it was confusing to ‘keep all that complicated stuff in your head’. 

Appearing on The One Show on Tuesday, Adrian, 62, talked about the upcoming series which follows his character, DS Steve Arnott, and DC Kate Fleming – the well-known faces of AC-12, the show’s fictional anti-corruption unit.

Alex Jones asked Adrian: ‘There was a lot of disruption wasn’t there? You sort of had to film it in two halves really.’

Adrian replied: ‘Yeah we did, like everybody else we went into lockdown in March when episode one and a bit of episode two had been filmed. 

‘And then we came back and we shot it all out of sequence. It was difficult.

‘One of the extraordinary things is that they revealed we’re going to have another episode out of it. So we’re going to have seven episodes instead of six.

‘But it was hard to get our heads around, you know, the storylines are complicated and when you’re shooting a scene out of sequence. 

‘It’s easy shooting two blocks, so you can keep all that complicated stuff in your head.’

Adrian added: ‘I’m actually dying to see it with everybody else because you know sometimes it gets a bit confusing but it will all be fixed in the edit as they say.’

When pressed for a release date by Alex’s co-host Michael Ball, the actor replied there isn’t an official date yet but thinks series six will be released in the next two to three months.  

The sixth series sees the debut of Kelly MacDonald as Detective Chief Inspector Joanne Davidson, senior investigating officer of an unsolved murder.

The show took a slightly different turn than the AC-12 trio expected, as filming and the plot both had to be altered to accommodate Covid-19 regulations. 

New safety measures even included the famous glass-walled interrogation room, where the AC-12 trio interrogate suspects in scenes that can take days to film, being altered.  

Previously speaking about the challenges of filming on Lorraine, writer Jed Mercurio admitted the filming process has been ‘tough’ for those involved.

Saying the crew were ‘delighted’ to be able to film the BBC show’s sixth season, Jed explained: ‘It’s been pretty tough to be honest for you.

‘I have to pay tribute to our brilliant cast and crew, we’re diligently wearing masks the whole time, we clean things that are passed from one person to another.’