Line of Duty season 6 will arrive by March 2021, BBC confirms

Filming had been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic

The BBC have confirmed a release window for series six of Line of Duty  – and it’s earlier than most people expected.

The broadcaster revealed (per the Radio Times) that the hotly anticipated next series of the hit police drama will be arriving on screens before the end of March 2021.

Filming on the series had suffered delays as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, amid a spate of postponements and cancellations across the wider film and TV industries.

Production had shut down in March, around the time of the first UK Covid-19 lockdown.

However, with filming having resumed in September, the series is slowly moving closer to completion.

Behind the scenes of the new series, with Adrian Dunbar, Kelly McDonald, Martin Compston, and Vicky McClure (BBC/World Productions)

Last month, Line of Duty creator Jed Mercurio shared six behind-the-scenes images from the set of series six on Twitter.

Line of Duty focuses on the investigations and manoeuvrings of a fictional police anti-corruption unit.

Mercurio has previously described the scripts for the show’s sixth outing as “ludicrously implausible”.

Writing on Twitter, Mercurio said he was “humbly grateful to the whole cast” of Line of Duty “for making great drama out of the ludicrously implausible scripts in today’s readthrough for Series 6”.

He singled out series stalwarts Martin Compston, Adrian Dunbar and Vicky McClure for praise, alongside Trainspotting’s Kelly Macdonald, who is joining the cast for the next run of episodes.