Line of Duty has been one of the UK’s favourite TV shows for almost seven years, ever since the first series premiered in the summer of 2012. But the most recent season of the police drama – which has seen anti-corruption unit AC-12 attempting to uncover the true identity of a high-ranking crooked officer known only as ‘H’ – has got the Stylist office more obsessed than ever.

Every Monday morning, meetings and kettle-queue chats frequently get derailed by questions about the previous night’s episode. Was Corbett a good guy or a bad guy? Could H be a woman? And what on earth do all those police acronyms actually mean? Four episodes in, we’re no closer to figuring out the answers to most of those questions than ever – but that doesn’t mean we’ll stop trying.

There are just two episodes left of this season of Line of Duty, and we’ve now been given more information about how the rest of the series will play out. The brilliant Anna Maxwell Martin is joining the final two episodes of this season as a senior anti-corruption detective, brought in from outside AC-12 to shake things up. 

Yorkshire-born actor Maxwell Martin got her big break in 2003, when she played the leading role of Lyra Silvertongue in the National Theatre’s production of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Since then, she has won two BAFTA TV Awards for Best Actress, for her performances in the BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House and Channel 4’s Poppy Shakespeare. 

Maxwell Martin also plays the lead role of Julia in Sharon Horgan’s BBC Two sitcom Motherland, for which she was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for Best Female Comedy Performance. The first season of Motherland ended in December 2017, and a second and third series are currently in the works. 

In Line of Duty, she will play Detective Chief Superintendent Patricia Carmichael, who she described as “a woman on a mission”.

“I’ve been a fan of Line of Duty for years, so was dead chuffed to be part of series five,” Maxwell Martin said. “I’m so pleased I no longer have to keep it a secret!

“I feel honoured to follow in the footsteps of the host of great actors who make up the Line of Duty family, and Jed Mercurio – of course – has written a brilliant character in Carmichael.”

Mercurio, the creator, lead writer and showrunner of Line of Duty, said that he was “delighted and flattered an actor of Anna Maxwell Martin’s status agreed to play this pivotal role in Line of Duty.

“Anna was a pleasure to work with and brought real depth to the character of DCS Carmichael.”

Line of Duty continues Sunday, 9pm, BBC One.

Images: BBC