You can have characters that say one thing and do another, and in certain kinds of drama, you can't get away with that because the audience will become confused - or certainly, the commissioners will become confused and tell you to stop doing it!

The idea of a physical stigma is quite appealing. When I wrote the book of 'Bodies,' there was a lot of that in the book about how there are physical manifestations of psychological problems - I think it's described as 'Narrativizing The Body.'

I tell the truth where it's the ethical thing to do, but in terms of entertainment, there's a certain fun and enjoyment that can be added to the experience by a few judicious lies.

When I'm writing, I am just doing what feels right for me.

I like to stay away from writing about good versus evil. I think the world is more complicated.

With the police thriller genre, people come to it with an expectation. It allows you to get away with a bit of violence, edginess, darkness.

I like to write about characters who are conflicted.

Part of me isn't that interested as a person and a viewer in people's personal lives. I'm much more interested in what people do in the workplace and what goals they set themselves. I guess that's why I write a lot of precinct drama.

I think that the audience is smart enough to know that just because a drama is relating to real-world parallels, it doesn't mean that its story is exactly that story.

I like to sit at my desk... sometimes I get inspiration when I'm going about my normal day-to-day life.

I always try and distinguish between facts and opinions.

I don't normally think of a specific actor. I concentrate on the character, and then when we get into pre-production, that's how names come up.

There is an apparatus set up to protect politicians, but those within that apparatus will have their own political views. I've got mates who are police officers and mates who are in the military, and they often have a very different view to the policy they're asked to carry out.

In my third year at medical school in Birmingham, I joined the Air Force as a medical cadet so that I was sponsored to become a doctor.

If we have friends over for dinner, I do the cooking. I like the pressure of a big meal and the technical challenges of a roast.

I come from gender-balanced workplaces. I started off working in medicine, and when I went through med school, it's 50/50 men and women. And when I started working as a doctor, it's 50/50 men and women. So I've always been very accustomed to women occupying pivotal roles in the professional environment.

There are great female role models out there, and I just feel very proud to be able to represent them in my work.

We're living in interesting times, where people seem to be able to say things which are contrary to what you would call rationalism.

I'm interested in institutions, particularly in the way institutions close ranks. They have hierarchies and their own ethics.

I write what I call precinct drama, and I tend to write things set in the workplace. Having an institution which gives a workplace its distinctive identity is really important to creating something which feels different.

I think a lot of police procedurals are very conventional. With the stuff I'm doing, I'm trying to approach the institution of the police in a different way.

The advantage you get of something having been on the air for a while is people get to know the characters more, and they get to be more invested in the world.

If you're a drama writer, obviously you always have to tell the truth; there's no element of fiction in at all.

The footballer I've admired most in the last ten years is Zinedine Zidane... one of those rare individuals who had the skill but also incredible vision.

I'm reading 'Ten Storey Love Song' by Richard Milward. I read his first novel, 'Apples,' after hearing a reading of his in the Hague. I really enjoyed it, so I've started this one.

The problem with individual opinion is that it doesn't necessary correlate with what the mass audience is thinking.

I'm always thinking about my work, always thinking about where it's taking me.

I want to be one of those serious, moody writers.

I try and relate my writing to something I know about, and I had a primary experience of being in a competitive, military environment and being part of a squadron.

I do like books to be quite an intense experience, and that's the kind of novel I respond to as a reader.

So with 'Ascent,' one of the things I wanted to do was not make it too remote from the reader, for it to be engaged with the human side and not just to be about the cold metal of planes and spacecraft.

'Line of Duty' had originally been conceived as a returnable drama, with the premise being that the fictional anticorruption unit AC-12 would move on to a new case in each series, centred on a high-profile antagonist accused of corruption.

In real constabularies, the relevant department that is the subject of 'Line of Duty' is called Professional Standards. However, 'Line of Duty' is set in a fictional anticorruption department, AC-12, in order to prevent any unintentional resemblance to actual units, cases, or individuals.

'Line Of Duty' is first and foremost a thriller. But I hope it will also be seen as a revisionist commentary on 21st century policing.

The doctor part of me recognises the light and shade of medical life, but the writer in me is more attracted by the darkness, perhaps because it is the road less travelled.

Part of what motivated my writing was anger. I was angry that the daily misery of doctors, nurses, and patients was being trivialised into soap opera. We were made to feel bad because we were not perfect like our television counterparts. We were resentful that our patients did not get better as quickly as they did on telly - or at all.

In 'Bodies,' we had a lot of gore because other medical dramas at the time had these hospitals where even a drop of blood seemed to be too much, which is clearly not what it's like when you cut someone up.

I think you've got to be careful with gore. Different genres need different things.

Special effects are becoming more and more affordable and looking more and more like the real thing.

In 'Bodies,' we had a lot of gore because it was a medical drama. The gore was authentic.

'Cardiac Arrest' was the first British drama to use a lot of medical jargon. 'ER' began the following year and was the first American drama to do that.

If you look at American medical fiction written by doctors, like 'The House of God' by Samuel Shem and 'The Blood of Strangers' by Frank Huyler, both have themes of cynicism and dysfunction running through them that you won't find in 'ER.' You find it in 'Scrubs,' but because that's a comedy, it gets away with it.

British drama can compete with America creatively. But the two systems are very different.

'Lady Chatterley's Lover' is a novel that constitutes a milestone of English literature.

It doesn't excite me as a writer to write some swearing or sex scenes, because they don't have any emotional content.

What makes an audience watch something and care about the characters is the emotional life of the characters.