I think a lot of police procedurals are very conventional. With the stuff I'm doing, I'm trying to approach the institution of the police in a different way.
— Jed Mercurio
We're living in interesting times, where people seem to be able to say things which are contrary to what you would call rationalism.
I come from gender-balanced workplaces. I started off working in medicine, and when I went through med school, it's 50/50 men and women. And when I started working as a doctor, it's 50/50 men and women. So I've always been very accustomed to women occupying pivotal roles in the professional environment.
As a teenager, I read a lot of science-fiction, but then I read 'Catch-22' and 'The Catcher in the Rye' and started reading more literary fiction.
There is an apparatus set up to protect politicians, but those within that apparatus will have their own political views. I've got mates who are police officers and mates who are in the military, and they often have a very different view to the policy they're asked to carry out.
I don't normally think of a specific actor. I concentrate on the character, and then when we get into pre-production, that's how names come up.
I like to sit at my desk... sometimes I get inspiration when I'm going about my normal day-to-day life.
Part of me isn't that interested as a person and a viewer in people's personal lives. I'm much more interested in what people do in the workplace and what goals they set themselves. I guess that's why I write a lot of precinct drama.
I am a social realist writer.
I believe that attributing flaws to medical characters makes them not just doctors but something more. It makes them people.
I tell the truth where it's the ethical thing to do, but in terms of entertainment, there's a certain fun and enjoyment that can be added to the experience by a few judicious lies.
In the modern workplace, sexism has adopted a more subtle persona; therefore, people can be accused of sexism where it's far harder to determine whether they're actually committing sexism or thinking in a sexist way.
I remember watching TV as a kid, and whenever there was some sort of jeopardy involving the hero, I could reassure myself that they were what I'd call a 'can't-die' character, so everything would be OK.
There's a classic medical aphorism: 'Listen to the patient; they're telling you the diagnosis.' Actually, a lot of patients are just telling you a lot of rubbish, and you have to stop them and ask the pertinent questions. But, yes, in both drama and medicine, isolated facts can accumulate to create the narrative.
It's always useful to know that people are emotionally invested in a series because it means that you can take them down a certain road, and they should be interested.
There aren't a lot of political dramas on TV, and those that are tend to be American.
I write what I call precinct drama, and I tend to write things set in the workplace. Having an institution which gives a workplace its distinctive identity is really important to creating something which feels different.
As a content creator, all you can do is do your best work and then hope that it resonates somehow with an audience.
I love writing thrillers.
In my third year at medical school in Birmingham, I joined the Air Force as a medical cadet so that I was sponsored to become a doctor.
People don't always understand the way it works with casting. TV projects tend to be commissioned to screen at a particular time of year, so your shooting dates are chosen to meet that. And then the casting is a matter of choosing from the actors who are available for those dates.
I like the differences between American and British television dramas.
People are used to watching cop shows in which the cops are very straight down the line and they solve the crimes, but I think people actually have a much more sophisticated and varied view of the police.
One of the things I learned on medical drama 'Bodies' was that actors can't play ambiguity.
With the police thriller genre, people come to it with an expectation. It allows you to get away with a bit of violence, edginess, darkness.
When I'm writing, I am just doing what feels right for me.
The idea of a physical stigma is quite appealing. When I wrote the book of 'Bodies,' there was a lot of that in the book about how there are physical manifestations of psychological problems - I think it's described as 'Narrativizing The Body.'
'Line of Duty' is a social realist drama, so it's set in a world that has the recognisable features of the authentic world we see around us.
I think it's hugely important to have a strong episode one; you can lose an audience so quickly now. You can't afford to take the attitude that you will use the first one as an introduction and save the high drama for later.
I think once you do the unexpected, and you take the viewers to a position of discomfort about being able to rely on characters surviving, then it does completely affect the way in which the drama is viewed.
For something like 'Line of Duty' to work, it has to be both plausible and unexpected.
I'm interested in institutions, particularly in the way institutions close ranks. They have hierarchies and their own ethics.
There are great female role models out there, and I just feel very proud to be able to represent them in my work.
If we have friends over for dinner, I do the cooking. I like the pressure of a big meal and the technical challenges of a roast.
Between the ages of 12 and 15, I wanted to be a pilot because I thought it would be glamorous and dangerous.
When 'Line of Duty' started on BBC2, there was a feeling that it couldn't ever become a big show because the BBC2 drama budget is much smaller, and a returning cop series would take away from the Stephen Poliakoff/David Hare stuff that they love to commission.
I always try and distinguish between facts and opinions.
I think that the audience is smart enough to know that just because a drama is relating to real-world parallels, it doesn't mean that its story is exactly that story.
I like to write about characters who are conflicted.
I like to stay away from writing about good versus evil. I think the world is more complicated.
Cannock is a friendly place. You can stroll down the road to a decent pub and have a good curry, and it is not too faceless.
You can have characters that say one thing and do another, and in certain kinds of drama, you can't get away with that because the audience will become confused - or certainly, the commissioners will become confused and tell you to stop doing it!
Some shows do nosedive at the end, or some piece of content could become incredibly controversial and affect the way the show is seen.
I've never reached the point where I was ready to abandon a series.
I love to do things that kind of mess with the movie formula that you can always find the right place to park; you've always got a phone signal. And I think audiences really respond to the limitations of real life when they intrude on drama.
We earned the 'Line of Duty' audience's loyalty over a number of years, and I feel privileged to have that.
