The four core supporting cast members talk about their characters: Saira Choudhry plays P.C. Tegan Thompson; Tom Varey plays P.C. Stuart O'Connell; Neet Mohan plays P.C. Taz Ahmed; and Ste Johnson plays P.C. Jonah Mitchell.

Saira: I describe Tegan as an alpha female. She's tough, ambitious and brave. Certainly braver than me. She wants to get to the top. Stuart is her partner and they go out and fight crime together

Tom: And they do it really well.

Saira: Tegan does it a bit better!

Tom: Well that's debatable! Stuart is cool, he's very smart and switched on. He's confident and has a lot of bravado. He likes talking to girls. But he doesn't like a joke at his expense. He can be quite stubborn but also vulnerable at times.

Saira: We've got an up and down relationship - a love-hate relationship. They are like brother and sister in that they argue and fight. However I think there's frustration there and that's because they do like each other - but don't tell each other.

Tom: There's something underlying in every scene with them, there's something they don't speak about between them. So they just choose instead to bully each other and flirt with each other.

Saira & Tom: But in a playground way!

Tom: Stuart apparently goes with a lot of girls - not a lot of dating, he skips the dating bit!

Saira: Tegan sleeps with someone (can't say who) and I think Tegan does that to get at Stuart because Stuart has been shagging around. They've got a bit of history. They got it on with each other at the Christmas party and I think since then Stuart has been going around doing his own thing. They are both not the type of people to tell each other their feelings. But Tegan likes men - a lot!

Saira & Tom: We're both really good at our jobs and work really well together.

Tom: Episode 7 is a really good example - they are very good at diffusing situations.

Saira: They just get it swept up really quickly. So I would say they work really well together. Stuart is calmer. Tegan often says the wrong thing and puts her foot in it quite a lot.

Neet: Taz is a Manchester boy born and bred who joined the force in the last couple of years. He's partnered up with Jonah. He's happy-go-lucky, goes with the flow. He's a very loyal member of the team, backs people up and always does what's right.

Ste: Jonah's really good at his job but it takes a toll on his family life. He's one of those obsessives to get the job done. He gets on with the team and joins in the banter. Jonah's not gone up the ranks. He's trying to find the balance: be happy in his job and at home.

Neet: I think Jonah's quite comfortable; he gets in, does his 30 years and then gets his pension.

Ste: Yeah and now that he's got Taz there and he's started teaching him things, he kind of sits back a little bit and lets Taz do the running. And then when Jonah is re-partnered with Tegan he has to run and obviously it doesn't work out well...! There has to be this trust between them all, there's this camaraderie. They are in situations everyday; they don't know what they are going into, whether knocking on the door of a drug dealer or worse. And they need to have the back up and respect of their fellow officers. That's why they have to be so close and ready to throw themselves in.

Saira: I spoke to people I know that do the actual job. And our supporting artists were our research because they were all either coppers or former coppers. They show us how to put handcuffs on, for example. We get a lot of good advice 'cause they've all been there.

Tom: We're quite proud of being quite old school. Like we refer to "the googlers" over the road in the new cop shop (Google Towers), and we're quite happy to not be part of that gang and to just get it done with folders and common sense.

Neet: They are a team. A really integrated unit with detectives and uniform. It's always great when uniform gets a pat on the back from the detectives. Deering is great, and in a way treats us like we're her kids. She's really caring but quite hard on us if we don't get things right. But she looks out for us - we're her team.

Ste: For me 24 Hours In Police Custody on Channel 4 was a big one, it was brilliant to watch for research. When we were cast it showed the police in their jobs and the backstage banter that happens in the bull pen. From interrogating a possible killer they then discuss it and then someone gets their holiday snaps out.

Neet: It's a job where the stakes are so high. But it is just a job and you have to just get on with it. You can't take too much of it home or it will just eat you up. My friend has been a policeman in London for the last 10 years, so that's been really interesting speaking to him. Hopefully he will enjoy the series as his humour can be very dark but in a way it's a tool that he uses to deal with the pressures. He's stayed in uniform as he enjoys the real policing on the beat and feels better serving the police being out there.

Saira: It's just amazing the way Paul Abbott writes. When you pick it up it feels so real and gritty and truthful. That's what I like. No Offence brings the dark and light together. You read an episode and you say "That was heavy, but it made me laugh".

Tom: There's no other TV show that I've seen with regards to a police drama that is dramatic and comedic at the same time. So it's nice to merge the two.

Ste: As soon as I heard it was a Paul Abbott script they didn't need to tell me anything else. When I got the job I just kept walking about saying "yeah I'm doing the new Paul Abbott." I just mentioned his name so many times. When his name is attached to a project you know he's going to throw everything at it. That's what's exciting about it. You enter Paul Abbott's world, it's light and dark funny and heart-breaking all in one - and sometimes literally all that in one sentence.

Neet: It's a unique world of its own - a mad world. Reading the script for the first time I couldn't quite work out what it was, but only when you let everything go and you say, "no this is a Paul Abbott script and a Paul Abbott world" that you actually find the real heartbeat of No Offence.