I have a lot of respect for our police forces. They are generally honest and effective.
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.
British drama can compete with America creatively. But the two systems are very different.
There's something very frightening about the vulnerability of mothers and babies.
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.
'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.
