Although the police declined to co-operate with the production of a series that specialises in corruption, conspiracy and cover-up, there is something comforting in true-blue coppers doggedly pursuing their errant colleagues … even when it turns out they are Masonic brethren. Jed Mercurio’s triumphantly compelling anti-corruption chronicle Line of Duty returns for a fourth series with a move from BBC2 to BBC1. It begins with a bang, literally, as a woman is abducted and then quickly rescued from a burning house, providing the breakthrough in the string of nasty crimes that are the subject of Operation Trapdoor.
Despite having scant time to recover from her Westworld torments, Thandie Newton inherits the mantle of Dodgy Detective under the AC-12 unit’s microscope. In series one (don’t read on if you haven’t seen previous seasons; find a way of watching it instead) Lennie James’s unfortunate DCI Gates went from being accused of accepting a free breakfast to becoming embroiled in money-laundering, kidnap, torture and murder, to committing suicide.
Keeley Hawes as series two’s DCI Denton survived a gangland massacre only to get a life sentence for conspiracy to commit murder. (Happily that was not the last we saw of her; she was sprung in series three.) Daniel Mays’s trigger-happy Sergeant Waldron was set up as the apparent central target for series three, but blew our minds by dying in the first episode, serving up an entire team of suspect officers. And finally, the stalwarts of AC-12 – Martin Compston as DS Steve Arnott, Vicky McClure as DS Kate Fleming and Adrian Dunbar as Dudley Do-Right Superintendent Ted Hastings – twigged that Craig Parkinson’s superbly slithery “Dot” Cottan was the murderous mole in their midst.
Newton apparently stars – we say apparently because all bets are off since Waldron’s exit – as DCI Roz Huntley, who may have fudged the evidence in Trapdoor’s career-defining bust. If so, one can sympathise, since the hunt for a serial killer has made her superiors very testy. “They’ve been killing us on Twitter!” her boss barks. There is also the none-too-subtle suggestion that “all those years out being a mum” have diminished her worth. That brings us to her seemingly pleasant but no doubt troubled home life. Huntley’s husband Nick barely figures in the first episode, but since he is played by Lee Ingleby, he must be up to no good. We need to keep an eye on him. As for slighted, unappreciated, whistleblowing forensics guy Tim (Jason Watkins), who clearly needs to get out more, does he look furtive or what?
Since Mercurio had the smarts to finally out Dot – however much we’ll miss his scheming, his ongoing outrages saw the series come dangerously close to jumping the shark – the biggest challenge to credulity in a show that glories in its realism is DS Fleming’s ongoing role as an undercover operative. After we thought she’d betrayed poor little Arnott last year, she cowgirled up, saved the day in magnificent action-woman style (with not a little city centre mayhem), and received an award for bravery. When she turns up using an alias and a thin cover story to ingratiate herself with the shrewd Huntley, is it possible that Roz and every copper in the Midlands doesn’t know who she is by now?
Line of Duty is on 26th March, 9pm, BBC1
