Yahoo News Line of Duty creator reveals huge format change for season 5
The creator of Line of Duty has revealed a huge format change for the forthcoming fifth season.
We already know that a balaclava-wearing Stephen Graham has a big part to play in the new run, and in a recent interview, Jed Mercurio talked about switching the series up to focus on an "organised crime group" rather than a single corrupt police officer.
"That is the fresh ground that we break in the series," he told Pilot TV magazine.
Related: Everything you need to know about Line of Duty series five
"That we've had these shadowy figures, 'the Balaclava Men', who are part of an organised crime group and have featured on and off all through the previous four seasons. But we’ve never really gone behind the mask and identified them as proper characters and found out about them.
"That was something that we felt was overdue and so in this season, rather than the customary approach, which is we present a police officer who is involved in a case, and that for whatever reasons there are allegations of corruption which AC-12 investigate, we are looking at this organised crime group who clearly, it's been established in the past, function to a certain extent through relationships with corrupt police officers.
"So, rather than looking at the corrupt police offers this time, we're looking at the other side of the coin, which is the [organised crime group]."
Related: Line of Duty star hints at series 5 release date – and return of an old face
Line of Duty star Martin Compston, who plays Steve Arnott, recently hinted that the fifth series will hit screens around April.
But we'll have to wait and see if that turns out to be true...
Line of Duty returns to BBC One later this year.
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