If you’re anything like me, you jumped for joy when you heard the BBC had greenlit a seventh season of hit crime drama Line of Duty. It’s been four years since the grisly drama drew to a close, but don’t expect new episodes to air any time soon.
During an interview on UK TV show This Morning, star Martin Compston revealed the team is set to start shooting in spring 2026. As of right now, they’ve got zero clue about scripts, plot, or anything else to do with the show’s next chapter.
However, that doesn’t mean we can’t tide over our FOMO in the meantime. Introducing new Paramount+ show The Revenge Club, with Compston leading a star-studded casts that includes Sharon Rooney and Meera Syal.
Over six episodes, a group of strangers join a divorce support group, each bringing their own dysfunctional baggage with them. After the first meeting, the group decides merely talking it out isn’t enough – they need cold-blooded revenge.
As the group tries to help each other pull off their wildest fantasies, they get into more and more trouble… and that eventually turns fatal. The Revenge Club is an unusual mix of frivolous humor and deadly-serious drama, and frankly I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it.
So, sitting down with Compston, I had to ask what was so different about the two shows, and whether being a fictional copper means he could figure out his own whodunnit (spoiler: he couldn’t).
‘Things quickly spiral out of hand’ in The Revenge Club, says Compston
“Sometimes the great ideas are right in front of you, but they’re only become obvious after somebody’s clocked it,” Compston told me. “I thought when I read it that it had to be such a ripe area… a divorce therapy group wreaking revenge… it hasn’t been done somewhere before.
“We’ve all got those little revenge fantasies in our head, and I think what keeps people good, for the most part, is that they remain fantasies,” he continued. “But, when you’ve got a load of people who are being pushed to the limit at their lowest ebb, and then you put them all together and give them a couple of drinks down the pub, it’s a quite combustible situation. It’s a lot of fun to play, but things quickly spiral out of hand.”
That’s certainly one way of putting it. From breaking into a school to plant fake exam papers, to pretending to be a clairvoyant to get an ex’s new flame to move out, this ragtag gang won’t let anything stop them from exacting their self-inflicted chaos. If anything, the first half of the season is akin to mid-2000s BBC series Hustle before the second half hits its Line of Duty stride.
“Because it does jump genres so much that I can’t quite pin it down as anything,” Compston added. “But, that was so exciting to be part of, because it kept us second guessing as a cast, wondering how is this going to come together. I didn’t know what the tone of the show was, because you can only play the truth of it. We’re in such ridiculous situations, putting rats down chimneys and then having our heart broken.
But, could the Line of Duty copper work out the whodunnit? “One of the things my wife hates about me is because I’ve done so many of those types of shows, I can do the mechanics of it,” he said. “I can usually see what twist is coming but, with this, I genuinely didn’t see who or what it was going to be. I couldn’t figure out. I think that’s one of the beauties of the script… it just keeps you guessing.”
If that doesn’t throw the gauntlet down to us armchair detectives, I don’t know what does.
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