Strike: The Ink Black Heart actors Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger on the sixth installement of the Cormoran Strike series

But the 43-year-old, who stars as Cormoran Strike, understands that crime dramas and murder mysteries are something a lot of viewers are craving right now, too.

“They are inherently gothic. I mean, there’s something in that that’s very human.

“It’s not just people wearing all black that are drawn to it. It’s a very fundamental bit of our existence – people’s capability to be evil – and to sort of juxtapose that with something very, I guess heartwarming, would be a slightly naff way of putting it, but certainly, people find something positive in what they have an emotional investment in,” says Burke.

“And I think crime dramas do function in the same way as fantasy fiction does. The idea of you being invested in something that is departed from the s*** that’s happening in the real world, which can often be worse.

"But when you take your head out of the real-life terror and put it into something else for a minute, it gives you that sense of otherness, freedom and escape,” says English actress Holliday Grainger, 36, who stars as Yorkshire detective Robin Ellacott.

Strike: The Ink Black Heart is the sixth story of the hit crime drama – coming to to BBC iPlayer and BBC One in co-production with HBO and Warner Bros. Discovery – adapted from J.K. Rowling’s best-selling crime novels written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

Burke hopes that viewers “can see that even though they’re not together [Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott], quote-unquote, we’ve gone out of our way to not repeat ourselves in terms of everything that’s going on, that’s been something very important to get right since the beginning,” he says.

When Edie Ledwell, played by Scottish actress Mirren Mack, 26, appears in Strike’s detective agency begging to speak to private detective Robin Ellacott, she doesn’t quite know what to make of the situation.

Edie is the co-creator of a popular cartoon, The Ink Black Heart, and is being cyberbullied by a mysterious online figure who goes by the pseudonym of Anomie. She is desperate to uncover Anomie’s true identity.

But Robin informs Edie that the agency is too busy to take on her case and thinks nothing more of it until a few weeks later, when she reads the shocking news that Edie has been tasered and then murdered in Highgate Cemetery, the location of The Ink Black Heart.

Robin and her business partner Cormoran Strike become drawn into the quest to uncover Anomie’s true identity.

But with a complex web of online aliases, business interests and family conflicts to navigate, Strike and Robin find themselves embroiled in a case that stretches them to their limit – including their personal relationship with each other.

Sometimes the workplace can be a breeding ground for love and lust, even though many companies frown on colleagues sparking up relationships, and view it as an HR nightmare. But it’s something Strike and Robin have had to navigate in this series.

“It’s always a sort of touch paper thing,” says Burke. “When you have some kind of feeling for somebody, it’s a warning sign that you are more invested than you thought.”

When did Strike realise that he had feelings for Robin?

“It’s very well phrased in the book by J.K. Rowling. But he knows from the beginning, and he doesn’t know at all. It’s the kind of paradox, but if it’s pushed down and in the subliminal, it flashes up in different moments,” says Burke.

But due to the recent heartbreak Robin has gone through, her priority was to protect her heart and their friendship.

“I think it’s a form of self-protection for her as well. She never lets herself realise how much she feels for Strike, but there’s this fear that she doesn’t want to ever be just another girl to him.

"She really respects him and needs their friendship and their business partnership. And so I think there’s this element of fear. But I think that she finally allows herself to realise how she feels for him,” says Grainger.

“Robin went through trauma at such a young age too, with her old friends and her parents. She’s still young, she’s still that kid. And then she’s been through an emotionally abusive or coercive relationship, that I think she’s so often either patronised and molly-coddled, or she’s been disrespected.

"But I think in Strike there’s someone that really sees her, and she is so protective of that because she needs that relationship. It’s almost like it’s not worth what could happen. It’s not worth the damage that anything else could create.”

Alongside the ongoing prospects of workplace romance, Strike: The Ink Black Heart also contributes to the ongoing conversation about violence against women and women being in dangerous situations.

“Robin has had her own trauma that she is working on herself to get through, and that is always present in this. And so it’s always present in the way in which Robin reacts to and deals with certain situations, and also the way in which Strike does for Robin.

"And I think that it’s certainly a kind of a lens through which a lot of the actions of other characters in this can be amplified,” says Grainger.

“As much as murder mysteries are sometimes seen as occupying a slightly less gritty part of the crime dramas, the reality is that so many murders and attacks do happen within a group of people who know their attacker.

"This is also inherent in most murder mystery stories,” says Burke.

Strike: The Ink Black Heart is coming to BBC One and BBC iPlayer soon.