After more than two years of waiting, Line of Duty season six is almost here. Martin Compston, Vicky McClure and Adrian Dunbar as back as AC-12 for another series but how many episodes are there? Express.co.uk has everything you need to know.
How many episodes are in Line of Duty series 6?
Line of Duty premieres this Sunday (March 21) at 9pm on BBC One and the BBC iPlayer.
Usually, Line of Duty runs for six episodes across six weeks on BBC One.
However, this time around, Line of Duty fans are in for a huge treat.
Season six of Line of Duty will have seven episodes in total, each an hour-long in length.
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Each episode will air every Sunday at 9pm on BBC One and the BBC iPlayer, finishing at 10pm.
This means the sixth outing of Line of Duty will conclude on Sunday, May 2.
Speaking to Express.co.uk and other press, Line of Duty creator Jed Mecurio revealed the sixth episode was originally going to be feature-length but after conversations with the BBC, the series was extended to seven episodes.
He said: “I guess it would have ended early if we’d done six because we had more stuff. So actually, it wasn’t the case of planning seven.
“It was just the effect of the interruption of shooting and when we went back, we ended up, for long periods working with two units, for all kinds of reasons related to safety, just getting through the shoot faster, being able to have a crew who could step in, if departments had to self isolate.
“So that meant that we were able to shoot more additional material than we normally do. We tend to overshoot because we tend to shoot a lot of explanations of things and then in the edit, we decide whether we need them or not whether things are clear enough without all the intervening stages being explained and laid out for the audience.
“What we found was that when we got to the end, we had initially conceived having a 90 minute, episode six, but with all the additions, it was pretty clear that it was going to be two hours and then we got into a conversation with the BBC about the best way to handle that and everybody agreed that it was [best] to split the last episode into two and that created episode seven.”
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To watch Line of Duty, you must have a TV Licence.
Each episode will be available to watch live as it airs on BBC One and on the BBC iPlayer.
Do not worry if you happen to miss an episode of Line of Duty, each instalment will be available to stream and download on the iPlayer after they have finished airing on TV.
The synopsis for the first episode of Line of Duty season six reads: “DCI Jo Davidson (played by Kelly MacDonald) receives new information about the whereabouts of a suspect in the unsolved murder of investigative journalist Gail Vella (Andi Osho).
“En route to raid the property, she spots an armed robbery in progress and stops the convoy.
“Suspicious of her motives, AC-12 launch an investigation. Still dealing with the fallout from their explosive investigation into undercover officer John Corbett (Stephen Graham), AC-12 soon realise they are facing their most enigmatic adversary yet.”