She said: “Line of Duty has an exceptionally big audience, and all the gritty dramas I was doing when I was younger probably didn’t have a very big audience.

“Then the Motherland phenomenon grew during Covid, it wasn’t a massive show and then it became a really big thing in lockdown, which coincided with Line of Duty coming out, and people thought, ‘How can she do different things? Weird!’ Even since then I keep trying to do different things and always do a project that is a new challenge.

Martin continued: “People are obsessed with Line of Duty and I loved playing Pat, she was an amazing character. I’d play Pat for the rest of my life, in fact I wish Jed would do the spin-off: ‘Pat’ – not even Pat doing policing, just her doing other things like going to the shops!”

Earlier this year, Martin’s Line of Duty co-star Martin Compston confirmed there are “no immediate plans” for a return to the show, saying: “I’m sorry. They’re some of my closest friends, we all love Jed [Mercurio], and we’d all love to work together at some point, but there are no immediate plans.

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“It’s just getting us all together and stuff. We’d like to but, yeah, these things are a bit complicated. But there are no immediate plans.”

Martin’s new series Until I Kill You sees her starring opposite Shaun Evans, in a dramatisation of the true story of Delia Balmer, who survived a near-fatal relationship.

Previous seasons of Line of Duty are available to stream now on BBC iPlayer. Until I Kill You will air on ITV1 and ITVX from Sunday 3rd November to Wednesday 6th November at 9pm on ITV1.

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