Line Of Duty star Adrian Dunbar has weighed in on the divisive ending to the show’s most recent season.
Adrian plays fan-favourite Superintendent Ted Hastings in the long-running BBC police drama, the sixth series of which concluded last year.
However, while the most recent season of Line Of Duty had millions gripped, many were ultimately disappointed by the somewhat underwhelming revelation that the mysterious “H” was actually DSU Ian Buckells.
In a new interview with The Independent, Adrian was asked for his thoughts on the ending, insisting he thought it was the right way to wrap things up.
“There were very few other ways of finishing it,” he told the newspaper.
“There never really is a kind of ‘Mr Big’ where the police are concerned – it’s usually just someone not passing on a piece of information, turning a blind eye.”
Adrian continued: “It’s the very simple things like that, [which] make the big crimes work – somebody’s decided not to pay attention to a piece of information because they’re in the pocket of some criminal.
“So I thought it was a very clever – if not wholly satisfying dramatically – way of ending the series.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Adrian was asked whether the twist about Buckells – and a line in which Hastings says his “corruption has been mistaken for incompetence” – were in any way inspired by Boris Johnson.
He explained: “Without us having to really think about that, I think people drew their own conclusions.
“If Boris Johnson hadn’t put himself in the crosshairs of all of that – if he hadn’t fulfilled all of the imaginings of that particular phrase, I mean... ’cause he did.
“So therefore, I think, the public naturally thought, ’Well, who do we know who’s all of those things? Obviously Boris.”
After the sixth season of Line Of Duty proved to be as popular as ever, fans are currently still speculating about whether a seventh could be in the pipeline, although it’s a subject creator Jed Mercurio is clearly not happy to discuss, apparently becoming “furious” when the subject was raised in an interview last year.
For his part, Adrian has said he thinks a seventh series will happen, although he recently teased it may be a much shorter season than fans are used to.