BBC Two's tense new thriller Collateral opens with a dramatic shooting and sees Carey Mulligan's detective uncover conspiracy and corruption... but don't go expecting the next Line of Duty.
Award-winning playwright David Hare has insisted that while he's a big fan of that show, his new four-parter is a very different beast.
"I'm doing my very best to avoid police procedural throughout," he said. "Because although I extravagantly admire Line of Duty and think it's fantastic, I do nevertheless feel that police procedural is a genre about which there's nothing to add. It's been done to death."
Collateral opens with a pizza delivery man being offed by a mysterious figure. But according to Hare, the series is "not a whodunnit, it's a whydunnit. It's about understanding who is involved, in what, and why. If you're a fan of Agatha Christie, this is a deeply unsatisfying story!"
Hare, who has never written episodic television before, explained that Collateral arose from his desire to tackle the issue of immigration in a drama, a topic which he considers to be "the major story of the 21st century".
Though he originally planned the project as a film, it was eventually "fast-tracked" by the BBC for television. "It's about how one incident [the shooting] resonates in all these different institutions," he explained.
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"Illegal immigration and detention centres become very much the focus of later episodes, but so does the church, so does parliament, so does the army... and obviously the police."
Oscar nominee Mulligan plays investigating officer DI Kip Glaspie, with John Simm playing David Mars – a Corbyn-esque Labour politician – opposite Billie Piper as his troubled wife Karen. Completing the show's central quartet is Nicola Walker as conflicted vicar Jane Oliver.
Related: Nicola Walker promises that BBC Two's Collateral "starts at a real pace, and it doesn't let go"
Hare singled out his experience of collaborating with Mulligan on the project, explaining how the two worked together on rewrites that he believes improved the final product.
[Above: Collateral director SJ Clarkson, David Hare and Carey Mulligan]
"If you work in the movies – in particular American movies – you're used to actors who want to change things, and they mostly want to change things in order to make the audience understand better what they are feeling," he said.
"A nice long speech will elucidate what they are undergoing! And those are horrific rewrites to undertake. But I think Carey wanted to make it as realistic as she possibly could."
Mulligan previously admitted she had to work to convince herself that she could play a formidable, no-nonsense copper. "I thought, 'This is ridiculous', because police officers have such authority. I'm scared of them!
"It was kind of about convincing myself that I was grown up enough. I still think I'm like 21, and the ingénue, and then I realise, 'Oh, I'm a grown-up actually, and maybe I could have a proper job!'"
Collateral begins tonight (Monday, February 12) at 9pm on BBC Two.
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