Top 45 Jed Mercurio Quotes

I am a social realist writer.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

‘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.

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.

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

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

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.

‘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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 you’ve got to be careful with gore. Different genres need different things.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 believe that properly regulated research in stem-cell biotechnology will lead to many valuable improvements in medical treatment and that objections on religious or ethical grounds should be vigorously opposed.

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

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

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.

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

‘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.

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.

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

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.’

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

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

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 writing thrillers.

Standards in public life have decayed over time… Incompetence is the norm.