Series 5 concluded last week on digital channel Watch, but will not air on ITV1 until early 2012.

Asked if waiting for reaction to Series 5’s performance on ITV1 next year meant that it would probably be January 2013 before a new series aired, Hodges confirmed to Sci-Fi Bulletin: “It does, but we’ve negotiated that before.”

He continued: “I think people will feel at the end of [Series 5] that we’ve reached an interesting point in the show’s development. Obviously we would like all the cast to come back, but if we do go again, and the cast changes, we think we would be able to make that work as a fresh start.”

Hodges added: “We’re not too concerned about the hiatus in the way we were [when the show was dropped at the end of Series 3] when it really was an awful shock. It was completely out of the blue and ruined all our plans to do various things. This series, because we had to plan for it as if it were our last episode, we think it is a very satisfying conclusion, but we have prepared the ground to go again.”

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