Line of Duty creator Jed Mercurio admits stars schedules can alter the show s storylines
Jed Mercurio has admitted that if actors on the show are unavailable or can t commit to filming at specific times he changes the script
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Sunday, 2nd May 2021 at 10:00 pm
Halfway through the Line of Duty season six finale, AC-12 finally found out the identity of ‘H’, or the “Fourth Man” who they had been chasing for so long. Did we, the viewers, find out at the same time? No, we most certainly did not.
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For another excruciating eight minutes, the team passed around print-outs and made cryptic remarks, exchanged knowing looks, and got sidetracked into other conversations. “All this time we’ve been chasing shadows! If this is right he’s been under our noses from the very beginning!” declared Steve. (Who was he talking about? Surely it’s Chief Constable Osborne, we thought.) And then we had a montage of armed officers drawing up to AC-12 and marching an unseen interviewee into the building, while DI Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) tap-tapped on his iPad and linked up the DIR. Of course, the camera pulled away before he typed in the name of the interviewee.
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Did you hear that mass scream from sofas nationwide at around 9:34pm on Sunday? It was the sound of millions of blindsided Line Of Duty viewers exclaiming a single word. And that word was “Buckells?!”.
Yes, recurring character DSU Ian Buckells (played by Nigel Boyle) was at last unmasked as the corrupt cop pulling strings on behalf of organised crime. Once erroneously code-named H, latterly known as the Fourth Man and now forever associated with baffled cries of: “What the… Buckells? Are you sure? Yes but Buckells, though? Mother of God!”
Despite fan theories proliferating online, bookmakers taking bets and everyone having their own pet theory, the big Buckells reveal miraculously managed to still pull off a major surprise. But has writer Jed Mercurio been laying a nine-year, six-series trail of subtle hints all along?
We were promised answers, and we sure did get them.
After years of analysing, theorising and dissecting, the identity of H – or The Fourth Man – was finally revealed, although perhaps it wasn t quite what we d been expecting.
Forgoing a huge bombshell twist in favour of a more realistic outcome, the elusive ghost that Ted Hastings, Steve Arnott and Martin Compston have been chasing for all these years was under their nose all along:
Ian Buckells. Yes – the bumbling, snarky DSI who couldn t organise a piss up in a brewery. BBC
Either he has been putting on the best cover act we ve ever seen, or The Fourth Man turned out to be less criminal mastermind and more accidental opportunist.
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Line of Duty deaths - How, exactly, have all of the major players snuffed it?
RIP.
It s not always easy to predict what twists and turns
Line of Duty has in store for us, but we can always count on Jed Mercurio to chuck a few grisly deaths in there along the way.
Over the course of its six seasons, the police corruption drama has severed ties with myriad faces – some deserving of their wretched fates, others less so – and we ve decided to round up all of the major exits for you because we re extremely