LINE OF DUTY: cop-on-cop action TV procedural that demands analysis

Also the chief constable going on camera “the public don’t want police officers to be held responsible for every little thing they’ve done” COME ON

also nice witness protection programme jo. everyone else gets a shitty terrace at the arse end of nowhere.

yeah totally. but the only reason they didn’t was because… chloe magicked up some IP address stuff on some printouts right at the end lol.

xpost lol

that shot of the three of them in the elevator was very

https://bensbargains.net/thecheckout/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Phantom-Zone.jpg

I think this show has only been accidentally good

It felt fairly ACAB, like, lol the police are bent, the few good ones are stymied at every turn and drummed out of investigations/work, the best you can hope for is witness protection or prescription drug abuse and broken marriage

What an absolute crock

no honestly i think S2 was incredibly tightly plotted with masterly control of viewer and character knowledge throughout. the last two and this one especiallyvtheres been no thing within the plot to unravel it. it’s just been “oh we found a thing”.

xpost to calz.

underground box of clues was an exciting, dramatic and not lazy touch

first four series were *tense*! last two have not been.

underground box of clues was an exciting, dramatic and not lazy touch

We were like, but this was as bad as Bodyguard and people loved that shit, but it’s getting a pretty bad reaction on twitter so...

look I’m just glad that Ted wasn’t bad, ok?!

I was a bit annoyed they kept referring to s5 so much cos I found it really boring, whereas the first few seasons (Gates! Denton! Dot!) are great. It really went off the rails a bit when they started doing that updated autopsy report “Dot actually was tapping away for a year, did ye not watch the footage or wha” shite.

otm.

Tbf the end vibe of "bad guy just doing his thing because circumstances allowed and he could and no-one was that bothered" is pretty consistent with the rest of it (and also possibly Bodies iirc, not that it was so black and white). If there'd been some Big Secret Jimmy Thurwell pulling the strings and anticipating every turn just to outwit them all that'd would've been terrible.

Pacing was so odd and come off it with the 'we need to interview THIS PERSON right away' "but this person has been in front of us all along" for not one but TWO bad guys. Still not 100% sure what Hargreaves was meant to have done/been.

xp yes Dot's morse code was the worse point of the whole thing and they re-wrote what Kate actually asked iirc.

Really did think Lomax was gonna be bent though at some point.

"Nice one mate"
"Nice one, mate"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E0aUvt3WUAMG3Dg?format=png&name=large

They really did lean on hurting Ted, that was the only bit I was like “ah God no pls”

TED HASTINGS INNOCENT

some contrarians are trying to suggest it wasn't appalling writing because it still illustrates that cops are self-serving lying fuckers.. hmmm ..No it was just shit.

how come that guy from occy health had such a swish office? every place i've worked, they've been in a portacabin in the car park at best

Well he was the fourth man you see. The role of confiscated prescription drugs and access to incriminating personal info about police officers there ocg most wanted rid of was... hold on, someone’s at the door

user gyac dragged from thread screeching “FLEMSON WAS ROBBED!!!!1” by the two Benny prison screws with 100% job satisfaction

I am actually glad Davidson got a nice cottage with a golden retriever out of it all, so I guess it wasn't all bad

got hooked up with josephine karlsson from spiral too

bit confused as to why davidson was given witness protection in the end. who was out to get her? pilkington and thurwell were dead, and she thought fairbank was the main guy? she didn't really know what buckells was up to (or did she?)

I was literally planning to get an AC-12 mug for my other half but apparently no-one makes mugs out of AC12?

I did enjoy the fact that after all the times they specify that evidence was found "in a lawful search", right at the end they have to say Arnott found the £50k "in an unlawful search"!

the search of the attic didn't meet their usual lofty standards

groan

I thought season five and the bodyguard were both terrible but, um, quite enjoyed this one and especially the last two episodes

Although the file at the end should’ve included the mayor, Adam, Glory and David Borenaz

I don't know, I thought it was fine for what it was. Obviously the whole fourth man thing was rubbish to begin with, as was the idea of identifying anyone based on one of the most common misspellings around, but taking those things on board, Kelly McDonald got out, Terry Boyle got out, Kate and Steve didn't shag each other, and Ted wasn't bent. I'm happy enough with the end result.

Genuinely, I've seen people on Twitter complaining because the final episode didn't give them the ray of hope they needed at the end of a terrible year. I think people were expecting Aaron Sorkin's Line of Duty.

“Disappointing” is trending on Twitter. (It’s a 99.9% match.) I actually liked the ending, but maybe I’m just perverse like that.

I sort of agree, it was mainly not that bad, just the pacing and dialogue made it feel a bit flat. And muddled. The focus on H (by fans and by Mercurio) has annoyed me slightly as it's not really where the show's strong points are.
The idea that only two bits of paper in the whole force had a misspelling of 'definitely' isn't very realistic - a lot was hanging on quite a weak link there.

Series 6: episode 7 was a welcome improvement after 6:5-6. In fact I was thrilled throughout.

It does seem to leave space for a series 7 with Carmichael and without Ted.

Outstanding programme, greatest British TV drama I've ever seen overall, but problems in 6:5-6 were troubling. 6:7 largely rose above that.

dismal episode and i think the last two series have been fairly feeble compared to the high of S2. but as i say, i liked that thesis.

I've never seen this show tbh and the fact that entire seasons of it are being written off itt means I doubt I will ever watch it.

We finally got a big interview reversal - loved it. The looks of pure hatred from the trio as Buckells sniggered at them could have melted glass. So to see them trap him at the end was delicious - and kind of easy - so I guess it proves the point about Buckells being thick as shit.

I have to think the country estate belongs to the redhead and Jo does actually have a shitty maisonette somewhere in Troon. In any case it’s another life of lies for oor Jo. Maybe she whispers the truth to the dog.

I liked how Kate and Steve realised how much they liked each other. It didn’t seem romantic to me - just a good recognition of a friendship that’s been tested and survives.

Oh and - that’s all very well Ted but what about the 50K eh??

Suspect the end would have had more kick for me if I hadn't seen series 1 and 4 so long ago that I had no memory that Buckells was even a returning character.

Thought it was Holte End Holdings cos Buckells was a Villa fan?

I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed Buckells’ incompetence and self-serving, and I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, so having him be H, and dismiss the idea of H at the same time, I felt was a good move. Especially in the era of Boris and Trump. The enemy isn’t Machiavelli; it’s bumbling greed with zero morals, that will take advantage of ANY situation to line its nest.

That said, HOLY FUCKING SHIT the dialogue, characterisation, and exposition this season has been terrible, alright mate. Abysmal, mate. Yes mate. Just fucking cringe after cringe after cringe.

Would love to see a season eight powered by Anna MM but only if Mercurio isn’t involved.

It would have been short-term satisfying to have a big Scooby Doo evil villain unmasking. “It was this evil copper we never saw before all along! Or even “It was the chief constable all along!” But I think it’s way more realistic and long term satisfying that it was just Buckells being a selfish dick with no morals.

Would love to know how much Nesbit got paid.

i have never watched line of duty but my friend helen used to work in the props department and once wrote her ex boyfriend's name on a tag for one of the bodies in the morgue

— claire biddles (@msclairebiddles) May 2, 2021

That’s beautiful.

I thought the resolution was pretty great. To be honest it's been openly flagged through the whole series - the withdrawal of surveillance from the flat, the new fake witness framing Terry Boyle, Pilkington moving to the Hill, closing the investigation on the 'race claim' case - that's been pretty much ignored by everyone who thought they were playing by TV 'everything bigger than the last time' rules rather than real life rules, where sometimes shit is just mundane.

To a degree though, who can blame them when Mercurio does rely on cop show tropes a lot of the time; range rovers screeching round the streets, unseen switch out fakery, infodumps based on analysis done off camera, that digital recorder noise to raise tension, looking moodily in different directions in a glass fronted lift. The worst dialogue in this ep though was clearly the bar scene at the end. "Nice one mate" says Steve when he gets handed a pint. "Nice one mate" says Kate because Mercurio has thought fuck it, there's only 10 minutes to go.

Twitter has been full of how it's ACAB based or a metaphor for Boris but fuck me, the guy unmasked as the one they've been looking for was in the first series 9 YEARS AGO. It's hard not to see this was the plan since the beginning (especially if, as stated above ^^^^^ Mercurio always had a 6-and-done strategy). Yes, there was DO YOU SEE IT WILL CONTINUE hints, but did anybody really expect otherwise given the nature of the show? That an organisation with multiple anti-corruption bodies - to the point where we can accept, as has been a series theme, that it's so expensive it needs cut back a bit and sacrificing AC-12 as the least successful - has basically one lot of bent coppers who all know each other? This actually led to the one dialogue triumph of this episode, where Osbourne's statement (as watched by Carmichael and Hastings) can also be interpreted as an admission he did interfere with Operation Lighthouse.

The thing I took away is how bad at actual policing AC-12 are. The whole build to conspiracy forced them into a cardinal mistake - that all criminals are one big group of mates who know each other and drink in the same pub. We kept on hearing OCG but as Buckells pointed out they're different small groups who might sometimes have mutual aims or benefits from working together on an incident and someone with no skin in the game has to pass the messages between them and put them together.

If it has to come back, new location, new cast is the only way to go but it's difficult to see how it can do that without treading the same ground (but I guess that's why I'm not a highly paid TV writer).

I thought Holte End Holdings too, although Kate pronounced it differently every time she said it.

I've never seen this show tbh and the fact that entire seasons of it are being written off itt means I doubt I will ever watch it.

Tom D: It's very fair not to watch, but that's a curious reason. If I tell you that I would never write off a season of it, think they are all excellent and that this is the best British TV drama I have ever seen, will you then reverse your decision?

Certainly Holte End. Very Midlands.