Forgot who someone is? Confused by all the new characters? Don't worry, here's our handy who's who guide to the fifth series of Line of Duty... A van full of seized drugs is under police protection when it’s suddenly attacked by an armed gang wearing balaclavas in the opening scenes of the new series of Line of Duty. Soon, AC-12 are on the case for a fifth series of the BBC1 hit, which returns this Sunday at 9pm. Here’s our who’s who guide to all the main characters in the new series of Line of Duty… Supt Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) The big cheese at AC-12, Ted’s team are on the case again, asking the tough questions. But in a world where you can’t trust anyone, should we be trusting Ted? DS Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) Poor Steve almost met his maker in the last series when he was attacked and shoved down some stairs by balaclava man. Now, he wants justice… “There are some good shocks this series,” says Martin, who plays Steve. DS Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) Kate has been a linchpin of the team and once again finds herself at the centre of a really tricky case… John Corbett (Stephen Graham) The leader of a particularly nasty organised crime gang, who launch a violent heist to steal a large haul of drugs from a van guarded by police. Lisa Mcqueen (Rochenda Sandall) She’s the only woman in John Corbett’s gang and gets caught up in an incident during the deadly raid… PC Jane Cafferty (Sian Reese-Williams) A mum and police officer, Jane is protecting the van when it’s held up by the violent balaclava gang. PC Tatleen Sohota (Taj Atwal) This young officer eagerly sets about helping AC-12 find possible clues as to who’s behind the raid on the van. Supt Alison Powell (Susan Vidler) Why does the police boss seem so determined to stop AC-12 investigating a top-secret undercover operation? PCC Rohan Sindwhani (Ace Bhatti) The police crime commissioner announces details to the press about both the raid and the police murders. Line of Duty returns on Sunday on BBC1.<doc-sep>Spoiler alert: this blog is for people watching series five of Line of Duty (it also contains spoilers from earlier series). Don’t read on unless you have watched episode one. Welcome back everyone. It’s been a bit of a wait, but the gang from AC-12 are finally back and caught up in what promises to be another complex story of betrayal, lies and, yes, videotape. This time round, the focus is on organised crime and our main antagonist is Stephen Graham’s DS John Corbett, an undercover cop who may just be so deep undercover that he’s gone over to the other side. But first, let us raise a toast in silence to the season’s first death: poor, out-of-her-depth PC Maneet Bindra (Maya Sondhi), who simply wanted to protect her useless cousin and now leaves a newly born baby motherless. The bad guys Miroslav, McQueen, Corbett, Ryan and Lee. Photograph: Aiden Monaghan/BBC/World Productions It could be that I read too many crime novels or indeed spend far too much of my life watching crime dramas, but I can’t have been the only one who knew Graham’s Corbett was the undercover cop and not Rochenda Sandall’s Lisa McQueen from early on. For a start, DS Steve Arnott automatically assumed it was her, and we all know that when young Arnott jumps to conclusions, they are generally wrong. More importantly, it was notable that despite Corbett’s air of suppressed violence and apparent control of the gang, it was McQueen who was being asked to do most of the actual criminal work, from taking out a police officer to setting up the drugs handover. Ultimately, however, I don’t think it matters whether you saw the twist coming or not. What’s interesting here is the very complicated dynamics in play: is Corbett a crooked cop, or a decent undercover officer who is about to bring down an entire crime network? Or does the truth lie somewhere in between? Did he start out with good intentions but get sucked in? Was he always a bad guy? Given this is Line of Duty, he has to be playing a con of some kind but is it a con on the crooks or one on the police? McQueen, meanwhile, is arguably even more interesting. She spared Cafferty (Sian Reese-Williams) despite being asked to shoot her, she’s clearly nervous about her position in the crime gang and was shown shaking with nerves in the toilet. I’m fascinated by her back story. Is she someone sucked into a criminal lifestyle and not sure how to get out, or is her story more complicated? Might she also be undercover? Or does she have her own suspicions regarding Corbett – is she perhaps trying to flush him out? The good guys Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure), Steve Arnott (Martin Compston), Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar). Photograph: Aiden Monaghan/BBC/World Productions It might be the first episode, but already some of AC-12 are feeling the strain. Most notably Supt Ted Hastings, who is living in a shabby hotel, clearly strapped for cash and still estranged from his wife. No wonder he seemed under pressure this episode, storming out of the interview with Maneet and rushing to label the late unlamented ACC Hilton as H, a move that I saw as born of desperation rather than guilt (yes, as far as the “Hastings is H” theories go, I remain as deep in denial as Ted is about his wife having left him). DI Kate Fleming, however, is made of far sterner stuff and thus continues to suspect that her boss is not being entirely straight where H is concerned. Does she really think Hastings might be the evil criminal mastermind, or is it more that she worries he’s cutting corners and risking heading down the wrong path? The jury is currently out. Kate’s home life appears considerably more straightforward, judging by the brief glimpse we got of her with a man and child. I would say that this means she’s reunited with her husband, but Kate’s personal life is so shrouded in mystery I’m not absolutely sure. No such mystery surrounds the third member of our intrepid trio. Steve Arnott is back on active duty (although hiding the occasional back twinge from his colleagues), still wearing the dapper waistcoats, and, most excitingly of all, he has grown a beard, presumably to add gravitas. I, for one, am not convinced. Still, the beard is clearly not hindering his Tinder chances, even if he wasn’t in the mood to swipe right. More interestingly, the end of the episode threw him back into contact with his ex, DS Sam Railson (Aiysha Hart), with whom he still has a certain chemistry … Case notes Balaclava men ... Photograph: BBC/World Productions We were introduced to yet another new department, the mysterious deep undercover group running Operation Peartree, headed up by Det Supt Alison Powell (Susan Vidler), a woman I really don’t trust. The fact that the hapless Malhotra (Maanuv Thiara) had a gambling habit and that’s why the gang had leverage is an interesting one – I can’t help wondering if Ted might be hiding a similar problem. Anyone keeping tally of this show’s obsession with hands should note that McQueen spent a lot of time trying to get control of hers, particularly in the toilet scene where she was forcing it to stop shaking. Curse you Jed Mercurio – I’m now going to spend an unnecessary amount of time worrying about Maneet’s baby. This is heading the way of Lindsay Denton’s cat. Weasel of the week Poor Maneet, condemned to death by her desire to help her cousin. Yet Ted was right – she had made a mockery of her position on AC-12, which is why she’s this week’s weasel even though her death broke my heart. Quote of the week “Right, so we have a betting shop robbery, the recruitment and blackmail of a civilian administrator. We have a hijack. We have narcotics traded. We have a rival organised gang framed. We have three police officers murdered and one seriously injured and the whole time your UCO has failed to pass on any intelligence that would have prevented these offences …” An incredulous Supt Ted Hastings sums it up for anyone struggling to keep up at the back. So what did you think? Are we back with bang? Did you know Corbett had to be the undercover, or were you sure it was McQueen? And what do you think of DS Arnott’s new beard? As ever, all speculation and no spoilers are welcome below …<doc-sep>You at the back, sit up straight. And everyone put their listening ears on. Here’s the list of all the things you’re going to need to understand series five of Line of Duty, which has returned to our screens after a fevered two-year wait. 1. OCG stands for organised crime group (or gang, depending on how formal you want to be). 2. UCO stands for undercover officer. 3. AC-12, as ever, refers to the beleaguered forms of DS Steve Arnott (Martin Compston), newly promoted DI Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) and Supt Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar), the unit in charge of investigating police corruption. Who guards the guardians? These guys. 4. Kate used to be a UCO. 5. Last series, PC Maneet Bindra (Maya Sondhi) became a reluctant informer for ACC Derek Hilton, who turned out to be a veritable lodestone of police corruption before he apparently killed himself in the final episode. 6. Martin Compston is a Scot. You don’t need to know this, I just like to remind people occasionally that he is not only doing the same filigree acting work as the rest of the cast, but he’s doing it in an unnatural accent. Linguistically, he’s doing everything backwards and in high heels – the Ginger Rogers of AC-12. 7. A Regulation 15 Notice is, as I’m sure you will remember from its previous appearances on the records of DS Arnott (undeserved), DI Matthew Cottan (deserved), DCI Roz Huntley (very much deserved) and Supt Hastings (don’t get me started, but – TBS) since the show began in 2012, is found in part three of the Police (Conduct) Regulations and advises the officer that he or she is suspected of general or gross misconduct and will be investigated by the professional standards department – and also that if the recipient is Steve, Ted will be very disappointed in him. 8. The name of AC-12’s new case is ED905. And what a case ED905 is. It begins with an ambush, something we’ve seen plenty of in Jed Mercurio’s murky magnum opus. This time it is to capture £100m worth of heroin being moved from a police warehouse to an incinerator. It leaves three police officers dead and another wounded but spared by the woman in the balaclava-ed gang. It’s ridiculous, unbearably tense and instantly addictive. The two years we have waited to have AC-12 back seem suddenly like the bare minimum needed to prepare adequately for the onslaught. Soon, we are deep in the thick of the plot. Steve and Kate’s investigations into the ambush are stymied by the fact that a UCO is embedded in the gang as part of a super-sensitive ongoing operation authorised at the very highest levels. But they keep on snapping at it like the anti-corruption terriers they are and eventually discover that the UCO hasn’t been heard from for months. “WTF! The UCO’s gone AWOL? FML,” Ted doesn’t quite say when they tell him, although he does threaten to issue reg 15s to all and sundry unless they sort themselves out, PDQ. The information about the drugs’ route, it emerges, was leaked by Maneet’s cousin. Maneet’s professional life unravels from there and she swiftly becomes one of Line of Duty’s object lessons in its perpetually underlying subject: the tiny susceptibilities and decisions that make up a life, the incremental nudges that finally put you and your conscience somewhere you and it never planned to be. Double-dealing between the gang selling the drugs and the one buying them complicates matters further. The first episode ends with the jolt and double-jolt, the impact of which is somehow never softened by the knowledge that it is the signature move of Mercurio’s ongoing masterpiece. Beneath the A plot lie the Bs. We see Steve at home, still suffering from the injuries he received last series. He’s taking painkillers – is he hooked? Ted is getting divorced, living in a hotel and late with his rent. What cracks will appear into which other people can wedge their nasty ways? As ever, nothing is wasted; not a scene, not a line, not a beat. For every morsel of information gathered by the team and by the viewer, another turn reveals 100 hidden possibilities. It fits together flawlessly – you can imagine Mercurio sitting like a watchmaker at his table with the parts spread before him and fitting the loupe to his eye before assembling the whole thing and listening for its perfectly regulated tick. Good times await. OMG.<doc-sep>
With AC-12 getting back to work on a brand new series of Line Of Duty, we’re about to be introduced to some new players. To get you primed and ready for the BBC drama’s return on Sunday night, here’s a who’s who of the new characters, and where you might have seen the actors who play them before... Stephen Graham as John Corbett BBC Corbett is a key figure in the deadly organised crime group known to have links with corrupt police officers, who are suspected to be under direct command of the shadowy figure known only as ‘H’. Corbett becomes a person of interest to AC-12 after his gang stage a heist to steal a large haul of drugs. Where have I seen Stephen Graham before? Stephen is best known for his role as Combo in This Is England, in which he appeared alongside fellow Line Of Duty star Vicky McClure. His other TV credits include Little Boy Blue, Taboo and HBO series Boardwalk Empire, in which he played Al Capone. He also starred in Guy Ritchie’s 2000 film Snatch as Tommy. Rochenda Sandall as Lisa McQueen BBC McQueen is one of Corbett’s associates, also working as part of the organised crime group ‘Balaclava Men’, who we discovered were operating at the end of series four. Where have I seen Rochenda Sandall before? Rochenda’s role in Line Of Duty is her most high-profile one to date, but she previously had a pretty big role in Kay Mellor drama Love, Lies And Records, as well as supporting parts in ITV’s Girlfriends and BBC One’s Broken. Taj Atwal as PC Tatleen Sohota BBC Pictures PC Sohota is a new, young officer to AC-12, and assists into the investigation to the gang’s drugs heist. Where have I seen Taj Atwal before? Taj is best known for playing the role of Jasminder in Sky One comedy Stella, while her most recent regular role was in Kay Mellor’s comedy In The Club. She also provides the voice of Madeline Lemaire in Thunderbirds Are Go!. Richard Pepple as PS Kyle Ferringham BBC Pictures At the moment, we know very little about Ferringham, who is one of the new series regulars. Where have I seen Richard Pepple before? Richard has had small roles in shows including of Little Women, Death In Paradise and Damilola, Our Loved Boy. Most recently, he was on our screens in Holby City as Kofi Johnstone, and as Joe in Sheridan Smith’s recent drama Cleaning Up. Susan Vidler as Superintendent Alison Powell BBC Pictures Supt Powell is a police boss determined to stop AC-12 launching an investigation into a top-secret undercover operation. Where have I seen Susan Vidler before? Her acting credits include small roles in a 2010 episode of Doctor Who and a star turn as Isobel Tulloch in the 2014 series of Shetland. However, eagle-eyed fans might also spot that she played Allison, Sick Boy’s girlfriend, in the cult movie Trainspotting. Sian Reese-Williams as PC Jane Cafferty BBC Pictures Jane is travelling in a convoy with a van containing a large haul of drugs when the balaclava gang stage a violent heist to steal it. Where have I see Sian Reese-Williams before? Emmerdale fans will instantly recognise her for playing Gennie Walker between 2008 and 2013. She is currently appearing in BBC Wales drama Craith, and also starred in Requiem. Ace Bhatti as PCC Rohan Sindwhani BBC Pictures The police crime commissioner is brought into the story when details of the heist are announced to the press. Where have I seen Ace Bhatti before? This is Ace’s first TV role since he appeared as Freddie Mercury’s father Bomi Bulsara in the film Bohemian Rhapsody. Prior to that, he played baddie Yusef Khan in EastEnders and had a small part in Bend It Like Beckham. His other TV credits include The Sarah Jane Adventures, New Street Law and Three Girls. Elizabeth Rider as Deputy Chief Constable Andrea Wise BBC