I think that the general public understands that its own doctors are human, fallible, and flawed.

The things I discovered when writing 'Line of Duty' were the tools you have available to write a thriller.

'Line Of Duty,' for dramatic purposes, tends to create characters whose corruption is balanced on certain ethical conflicts, whereas the majority of corruption in the real world is simply based on greed.

I have a lot of respect for our police forces. They are generally honest and effective.

As a teenager, I read a lot of science-fiction, but then I read 'Catch-22' and 'The Catcher in the Rye' and started reading more literary fiction.

Between the ages of 12 and 15, I wanted to be a pilot because I thought it would be glamorous and dangerous.

I believe that attributing flaws to medical characters makes them not just doctors but something more. It makes them people.

When a critic or journalist writes, 'It's too complex,' or, 'It's full of plot holes,' they very rarely take the step of identifying what they mean. The reason they do that is to protect themselves, because they don't want to reveal that they may have misunderstood or missed something.

With 'Cardiac Arrest,' I wanted to show that there were times when doctors really didn't care.

There's something very frightening about the vulnerability of mothers and babies.

No one was more surprised than me by the success of the first series of 'Line of Duty.'

'Bodies' remains the drama I'm most proud of.

'Frankenstein' is a timeless classic. As science advances, it becomes more relevant, not less. Its fantasy moves closer to fact, its horrors closer to reality.

It was an absolute pleasure working with Stephen Graham. I've admired his work for many years, and what he brings is that real sense of authenticity.

It's important that the actor doesn't feel like they're working in a vacuum. If the actor is told, 'Oh, it's a secret; just play it this way or that way,' it's a bit patronising. I think you have to bring the actor into your thinking and explain things.

As a content creator, all you can do is do your best work and then hope that it resonates somehow with an audience.

I like the differences between American and British television dramas.

The part of my life where my character was defined was at work because of the decisions I make and the things I do, and I guess that's what I feel qualifies me and attracts me to write the characters I do.

Cannock is a friendly place. You can stroll down the road to a decent pub and have a good curry, and it is not too faceless.

Certain people in politics and the press felt there was a political spin to 'Cardiac Arrest,' but there was no political agenda to what I was doing.

There are some writers who don't write about people who do jobs. I'm not going to name them, but you watch one of their films, or you read one of their books, and you think, 'What job do they do?' They seem to have a nice house and a nice income. How have they got it?

When 'Line of Duty' started on BBC2, there was a feeling that it couldn't ever become a big show because the BBC2 drama budget is much smaller, and a returning cop series would take away from the Stephen Poliakoff/David Hare stuff that they love to commission.

People don't always understand the way it works with casting. TV projects tend to be commissioned to screen at a particular time of year, so your shooting dates are chosen to meet that. And then the casting is a matter of choosing from the actors who are available for those dates.

There's a classic medical aphorism: 'Listen to the patient; they're telling you the diagnosis.' Actually, a lot of patients are just telling you a lot of rubbish, and you have to stop them and ask the pertinent questions. But, yes, in both drama and medicine, isolated facts can accumulate to create the narrative.

I am a social realist writer.

One of the things I learned on medical drama 'Bodies' was that actors can't play ambiguity.

'Line of Duty' is a social realist drama, so it's set in a world that has the recognisable features of the authentic world we see around us.

For something like 'Line of Duty' to work, it has to be both plausible and unexpected.

One of the most significant threats to our national security was and is home-grown Islamist terrorism.

Nowadays, you can't broadcast dodgy special effects and then put up a caption saying, 'Sorry, this is what the budget was.' You have to do it with high production values because the audience has been spoilt by the special effects on things like 'The X Files' and 'Independence Day.'

Sci-fi gives you the scope to do grand stories.

The world is a horrible place, but no one worries because we have all been pacified by anodyne television in which incorruptible cops solve crimes, crusading lawyers keep the innocent out of prison, and streetwise social workers rescue children from abuse.

People are used to watching cop shows in which the cops are very straight down the line and they solve the crimes, but I think people actually have a much more sophisticated and varied view of the police.

There aren't a lot of political dramas on TV, and those that are tend to be American.

We earned the 'Line of Duty' audience's loyalty over a number of years, and I feel privileged to have that.

It's always useful to know that people are emotionally invested in a series because it means that you can take them down a certain road, and they should be interested.

I love to do things that kind of mess with the movie formula that you can always find the right place to park; you've always got a phone signal. And I think audiences really respond to the limitations of real life when they intrude on drama.

I think once you do the unexpected, and you take the viewers to a position of discomfort about being able to rely on characters surviving, then it does completely affect the way in which the drama is viewed.

I've never reached the point where I was ready to abandon a series.

I think it's hugely important to have a strong episode one; you can lose an audience so quickly now. You can't afford to take the attitude that you will use the first one as an introduction and save the high drama for later.

I remember watching TV as a kid, and whenever there was some sort of jeopardy involving the hero, I could reassure myself that they were what I'd call a 'can't-die' character, so everything would be OK.

Some shows do nosedive at the end, or some piece of content could become incredibly controversial and affect the way the show is seen.

In the modern workplace, sexism has adopted a more subtle persona; therefore, people can be accused of sexism where it's far harder to determine whether they're actually committing sexism or thinking in a sexist way.

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.