Anyone who harboured hopes that we’d see a return of Waking the Dead now that its short-lived sequel, The Body Farm, has been axed is going to be left bitterly disappointed.

Actor Trevor Eve, who played cold-case boss Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd in the long-running BBC1 crime drama, has said that the series is definitely not going to be revived.

“I loved Waking the Dead, but I’m very happy it’s not going again,” he told the Scotsman. “It absolutely feels like a weight off my shoulders. There is no chance of it coming back.

“It was the right decision to stop it then. When we finished, everyone said, ‘It’s still a really good series’. That’s great. You don’t want people to say, ‘It’s not as good as it used to be.’”

Eve, 60, starred alongside Sue Johnston in nine series of Waking the Dead from 2000 until 2011. But follow-up The Body Farm, in which forensic specialist Eve Lockhart (Tara FitzGerald) headed up her own private pathology unit, lasted just six episodes.

Trevor Eve can next be seen as hostage negotiator Dominic King in the second series of Kidnap and Ransom, which begins tomorrow at 9pm on ITV1.