Adrian Dunbar is best known for playing Superintendent Ted Hastings in Line of Duty and Alex Ridley in the ITV crime drama but has had a hugely successful career
Irish actor Adrian Dunbar is set to grace our telly screens once again this weekend as he reprises his role in the popular ITV series Ridley.
The crime drama, crafted by Vera screenwriter Paul Matthew Thompson and Jonathan Fisher, sees the Line of Duty star portray a former detective inspector who is called back 18 months post early retirement due to a breakdown to serve as a consultant.
Shot across rural locations primarily in Lancashire, the Yorkshire Dales and Penine moors, Adrian’s character has lost his wife and daughter in a house fire and spends part of his retirement as a pianist and singer in a jazz club where he is a co-owner. He aids former colleague Carol Farman (Bronagh Waugh), recently promoted to detective inspector.
In a chat with the Radio Times, Adrian confessed that the second series finds Alex in a better emotional state. He said: “Alex was two years on from his wife and child dying in the first series, and now it’s another two years on. We don’t lean so heavily into him being isolated and grieving – I think it’s important for the audience to see that people can move on from grief.”
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Discussing how it stands apart from other crime dramas, he explained: “It sets up its own niche. It’s not cosy crime by any means, and yet it’s occupying that Sunday-night slot where you can’t be too visceral. So you have the serious police procedural that we devote time and thought to, and then there’s the family aspect. I was insistent that we needed somewhere else to go, and that’s the jazz club and the musical element,” reports the Express.
Before stepping into the shoes of Alex Ridley, Adrian, now 67, had a long and diverse career that extends far beyond his memorable role as Superintendent Ted Hastings in all six series of Line of Duty.
Indeed, besides featuring in TV dramas like Ashes to Ashes, The Hollow Crown and Broken, he’s appeared in several major films, including The Crying Game and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
In 1989, he starred alongside Daniel Day-Lewis, who portrayed Christy Brown, in My Left Foot and Adrian looks almost unrecognisable in a recently unearthed photo of him in the role of Peter.
The film is set in mid-20th century working class Dublin and narrates the story of Irish author and artist Christy who was born with cerebral palsy and could only control his left foot.
During filming, Adrian had recently marked his 30th birthday and it would be over two decades before he became a familiar face through Line of Duty.
In the photograph, he’s sporting a suit complete with patterned bow tie, sporting a head of sandy, curly hair and beaming broadly – quite different from no-nonsense Ted Hastings.
Adrian recently dropped the strongest suggestion yet that Line of Duty might be making its way back to our television screens in the near future when he hinted that all indicators are “very good” for fresh episodes to be shot next year.
This would see him reunited with his Line of Duty colleagues, Martin Compston as DS Steve Arnott and Vicky McClure as DC Kate Fleming.
When pressed for news on a speculated new series, he told Radio Times: “Myself, Martin and Vicky talk all the time, but Jed [Mercurio, the series creator], not so much, because he’s working on a project in the US at the minute.
“So yeah, we’re very tight, and we’ll meet up and have a curry, then the internet goes mad if we’re all seen together. There were signs that we were going to be doing something next year.
“We’re all waiting for the BBC to say, ‘Yeah, it’s happening’. An official confirmation is what we’re waiting on, but all the signs are very good. Jed hasn’t given us any updates – he’s beavering away, I suspect.”
Ridley returns to ITV1 on Sunday, August 10 at 9pm.
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