Metropolitan Police is to stop investigating “non-crime hate incidents” to “reduce ambiguity” after prosecutors dropped a case against Graham Linehan.

Linehan, 57, will face no further action after being arrested over his social media posts about transgender people.

The Father Ted and IT Crowd creator said his lawyers had been told the case wouldn’t proceed. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed the move.

Linehan, 57, was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence when he landed at Heathrow from his home in the US on 1 September.

The incident drew criticism of the police and government from some politicians and free-speech campaigners.

Met Police said today it would stop investigating “non-crime hate incidents” to “reduce ambiguity” and “provide clearer direction for officers”.

Posting on X, Linehan announced : “After a successful hearing to get my bail conditions lifted (one which the police officer in charge of the case didn’t even bother to attend) the Crown Prosecution Service has dropped the case.

“With the aid of the Free Speech Union, I still aim to hold the police accountable for what is only the latest attempt to silence and suppress gender critical voices on behalf of dangerous and disturbed men.”

The union said it had hired a “top flight team of lawyers to sue the Met for wrongful arrest, among other things”.

“The police need to be taught a lesson that they cannot allow themselves to be continually manipulated by woke activists,” it added.

A Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson confirmed it had reviewed the case file and decided “no further action” would be taken.

In one of his posts, Linehan wrote: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”

Another was a photo of a trans-rights protest, with the comment “a photo you can smell”, and a follow-up post saying: “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F*** em.”

A Met Police statement after the case was dropped acknowledged “concern” around Linehan’s arrest.

It added: “The commissioner has been clear he doesn’t believe officers should be policing toxic culture war debates, with current laws and rules on inciting violence online leaving them in an impossible position.

“As a result, the Met will no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents.

“We believe this will provide clearer direction for officers, reduce ambiguity and enable them to focus on matters that meet the threshold for criminal investigations.”

Linehan said on his blog that his was arrested by five armed officers and had to go to A&E after his blood pressure reached “stroke territory” during his interrogation.

Police said the officers’ guns were never drawn and were only present as Linehan was detained by the aviation unit, which routinely carries firearms.

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JK Rowling, who’s regularly shared her views on women’s rights in relation to transgender rights, was among those who had criticised the arrest, calling it “utterly deplorable”.

Reform’s Nigel Farage, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, and ex-foreign secretary Sir James Cleverly also hit out at the treatment of Linehan.

One of Harper Lee’s surviving relatives says it’s possible there could be major unpublished works by the author still to be discovered, following the release of eight of her previously unseen short stories.

Describing the mystery around a manuscript titled The Long Goodbye, which Lee wrote before To Kill A Mockingbird, Lee’s nephew, Dr Edwin Conner, told Sky News: “Even the family doesn’t know everything that remains in her papers. So, it could be there waiting to be published.”

Dr Conner says Lee submitted a 111-page manuscript, titled The Long Goodbye, after writing Go Set A Watchman in 1957.

The retired English professor explains: “It’s not clear to me or to others in the family, to what extent [The Long Goodbye] might have been integrated into To Kill a Mockingbird, which she wrote immediately after, or to what extent it was a freestanding manuscript that is altogether different and that might stand to be published in the future.”

A second mystery exists in the form of a true crime novel, The Reverend, which Lee was known to have begun researching in the late 1970s, about Alabama preacher Reverend Willie Maxwell who was accused of five murders before being murdered himself.

Dr Conner said: “The manuscript of a nonfiction piece, that according to some people doesn’t exist, according to others who claim to have seen it, does [is also a mystery]. We don’t know where it is, or whether it is, really.

“That could be a surprise that has yet to be revealed if we discover it and it’s published, which is a real possibility.”

He believes much of the manuscript was written in his family home and says his mother, Louise, who was Lee’s older sister, saw a “finished version of it” on the dining room table.

Dr Conner says there are “others who just as fiercely say no, it was never completed”.

‘She did want to publish these stories’

There has long been debate over why Lee published just two books in her lifetime.

To Kill a Mockingbird came out in 1960. Selling more than 46 million copies worldwide, translated into more than 40 languages and winning a Pulitzer Prize, it’s arguably the most influential American book of the 20th century.

Fifty-five years later, Lee published a sequel, Go Set A Watchman, written ahead of Mockingbird, but set at a later date.

Then aged 88, and with failing health, there were questions over how much influence Lee had over the decision to publish.

Asked how happy she’d be to see some of her earliest work, containing early outlines for Mockingbird’s narrator Jean Louise Finch and the story’s hero Atticus Finch, now hitting the shelves, Dr Conner says: “I think she’d be delighted.”

He says Lee had presented them to her first agent, Maurice Crane, at their first meeting in 1956, “precisely because she did want to publish these stories”.

And while dubbing them “apprentice stories,” which he admits “don’t represent her at her best as a writer,” he says they show “literary genius of a kind”.

Notoriously private, he says the stories – which were discovered neatly typed out in one of Lee’s New York apartments after her death – offer “deeply enthralling new glimpses into her as a person”.

Never marrying or having children, he says Lee maintained a degree of privacy even with her family: “You never saw her complete personality… We thought we knew her, we thought we’d seen everything, but no, we hadn’t.”

‘That’s it, I’m not giving any more interviews’

While describing her as a “complicated woman,” he insists Lee was far from the recluse she’s frequently painted as.

He says: “In company, she was most of the time delightful. She was a lively personality, she was funny, witty, and you would think she was very outgoing.”

But Lee was known to have struggled with her success.

Dr Conner explains: “She never ever wanted fame or celebrity because she suspected, or knew, that would involve the kind of uncomfortable situations in public situations that she found just no satisfaction or pleasure in”.

He says while in the early years of Mockingbird Lee gave interviews, the wild success of the book soon rendered such promotion unnecessary, leading her to decide: “That’s it, I’m not giving any more interviews”.

While he admits she was subsequently much happier, he goes on: “Not that she was a recluse, as some people thought. She wasn’t at all a recluse, but she didn’t enjoy public appearances and interviews particularly. She wanted the work to speak for itself.”

‘Deeply hurt’ by Truman Capote

Famously close to Truman Capote, one of the pieces in Lee’s newly released collection is a profile of her fellow author.

Dr Conner says that piece – a love-letter of sorts, describing Capote’s literary achievements – is all the more remarkable because at the point Lee wrote it in 1966, when she and Capote “were not even on speaking terms”.

He says Lee “probably knew [Capote] better than any other person alive when that was written”, adding, “she did love him as a friend very much, even when he was not speaking to her”.

Friends since childhood – and the prototype for the character of Dill in Mockingbird – Capote later hired Lee to help him research his 1965 true crime novel In Cold Blood.

Despite his book’s relative success, Dr Conner believes Capote was “bitter” over the fact Mockingbird far eclipsed it in accolades and recognition.

“He had been writing for much longer. He felt that he was at least as good as she was, and he was very envious of her success”.

Dr Conner says Lee was “deeply hurt” at Capote’s rejection of her, never speaking about him in later life.

Recalling his own meeting with Capote many years later, Dr Conner says he “got a personal sense of how [Capote] could charm the socks off of anybody, male or female”.

He says it was noteworthy that while Capote asked about his mother, who he had been fond of, he “never once mentioned” Harper.

Sky News has contacted Lee’s lawyer and the executor of her estate, Tonya Carter, for comment.

The Land of Sweet Forever: Stories and Essays, by Harper Lee is on sale from Tuesday

It was a pretty wild morning.

In the space of just a few hours, we witnessed a gangland killing, a jewellery heist and stepped onboard a private jet.

We observed a billionaire CEO at work, a dramatic family showdown in a hospital and a drunken karaoke party.

It was all part of a tour around a massive Chinese facility producing what are known as vertical micro-dramas. To describe the experience as somewhat dizzying is an understatement.

If you haven’t heard of them, micro-dramas are a new cultural sensation sweeping not just China but the world, a remarkable example of China’s booming soft power.

They are essentially serialised productions split into episodes of roughly a minute, shot in vertical and viewed solely on smartphones.

Think soap operas for the TikTok generation.

‘Secret surrogate to the Mafia King’

The story lines are sensational and melodramatic with titles that border the ridiculous; ‘Ex-Convict nanny and Billionaire single dad’, ‘Pregnant by my Tough Daddy CEO’ and ‘Secret Surrogate to the Mafia King’, just some examples.

The action is fast and the characters simplistic, while autoplay and multiple mini cliff hangers are designed to provide an addictive dopamine hit.

It’s a format which has sprung to life in just the last few years, developed initially in China in the wake of the pandemic, and its success has been extraordinary.

Some of the most-watched titles have hundreds of millions of views and downloads of short drama apps were over six times higher in the first quarter of 2025 than that same period last year, according to data from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm.

The Chinese government recently revealed that over 50% of all internet users in China have watched a micro-drama, more than have ordered food online or used a ride-hailing service.

‘You can easily binge five or six episodes on the subway commute’

“People’s lives are so stressful and packed these days,” explains Ji Jingdong, a producer of micro-dramas who made the switch from traditional film around three years ago.

“When you watch vertical-screen content, you can easily binge five or six episodes on the subway commute, right? And let’s face it, you’re barely halfway through an ordinary TV episode before you reach your stop.

“Scrolling through vertical screens at a fast pace is actually pretty stress-relieving. Especially those so-called ‘mindless dramas’ – they’re incredibly relaxing to watch.”

That mass appeal, paired with extremely fast turnaround times and no-frills production is translating into massive revenues.

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Last year, the industry revenue was an astonishing $6.9bn, for the first time exceeding the value of the Chinese box office.

Its figure is almost 14 times as high as in 2021, just three years ago.

But with this huge reach and revenues comes both challenge and opportunity for a system like China where everything including cultural products is strictly controlled.

1,200 series taken down

Indeed in February of this year over 1,200 series were taken down, deemed too “vulgar” or inappropriate, while a wave of new regulations now require projects over a certain value to have government approval.

In addition there are initiatives to encourage production houses to make dramas that promote certain values such as ‘Learn the law with Micro-Short Dramas’ and ‘Explore intangible cultural heritage through micro short dramas’.

It’s a framework they are aware of at the Meigao Micro Drama Super Factory, in the southeastern city of Quzhou.

This 67,000 square metre facility was initially constructed as a COVID quarantine hotel, but it now houses around 200 different sets where multiple crews can shoot their dramas simultaneously.

There is almost any indoor environment you could imagine – from a bank, courthouse and subway to a ballroom, office and multiple home environments.

The CEO Dai Wenxue explains with pride how they made 500 micro-dramas last year.

But there is also a clear acknowledgement that the transformation of this venue was achieved with local government support, and that this massive Chinese success story also serves a political purpose.

Aligning with ‘the nation’s overarching strategic vision’

“The early phase emphasised growth, with the government taking a relatively relaxed but not lax approach,” he explains. “Now, the focus has shifted toward premium production, cultural exports and telling compelling Chinese stories.

“This aligns with the nation’s overarching strategic vision. That’s the current landscape.”

Indeed, while the majority of productions are fun and frivolous, for its critics, the industry is a perfect propaganda tool.

This autumn, in fact, saw a huge boom in government-encouraged patriotic war productions to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two and a huge accompanying military parade in Beijing.

All this mattered because the format is now being aggressively exported abroad.

Almost all production houses worth their salt are leaning into English language productions. Meigao is in fact building an entire second location with American-style scenes.

And it’s no wonder when you look at the numbers. According to analysis undertaken by Sensor Tower, in the first quarter of 2025, downloads in the US had gone up 54% compared to the same period in 2024. In Latin America it was 69% and in India a remarkable 113%.

‘A huge uptick’

“So in the past 10 months, right after the Chinese New Year, there was definitely a huge uptick,” says Max Olsen, an American actor living in Beijing. For him and other Western actors there has been a hugely noticeable boom in work .

“A bunch of productions decided that they were going to shoot, you know, they’re going to produce one a week.

“Obviously, with money, with eyeballs, with attention, comes a degree of power.”

There are of course questions about how this type of soft power translates and what China could or would do with it. But it is just one of a number of cultural exports playing into a trend of China positioning itself as accessible and relatable, even ‘cool’.

Indeed for such a new format there is clearly still results yet to be seen.

“I don’t think the double-digit growth will continue forever,” says Olsen.

“But I suspect in five years’ time, we’ll have a very established industry.”