As Line of Duty draws to a close on Sunday, the big questions are: who really is H? How might it all end? And who is most definately (remember that one?) going down?
Supt Ted Hastings is H, or ‘the fourth man’
It would be a shock for viewers if the man who has spent six series proudly railing against bent coppers turns out to be a bent copper, but there’s no denying the gaffer’s behaviour is looking more and more suspicious. There’s the money given to DS John Corbett’s widow, Steph, the meeting last series with Carl Banks’s brother, Lee, in prison, who claims Hastings told him there was a rat in the organised crime group, and then there is Hastings’ inability or refusal to spell a certain word favoured by the digital OCG puppet master who has been pulling Jo Davidson’s strings. Is Hastings bent? Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey, he may just be.
3/5 definatelys
DCS Patricia Carmichael is up to her polo neck in it
The brilliantly awful and efficient Carmichael has turned AC-12 upside down and inside out. During last week’s interrogation scene, as Hastings pressed Davidson on widespread OCG infiltration of the police, Carmichael repeatedly shut him down. Davidson mostly refused to comment. Was she afraid of Carmichael or Hastings, or both? Many viewers noticed that Carmichael tapped her pen four times: morse code for H? One theory is that Carmichael is the fourth man. Another is she is close to catching the real H (possibly the dodgy chief constable of police, Philip Osborne?) and is using AC-12 to get there. Either way, Anna Maxwell Martin has played a blinder.
4/5 definatelys
Marcus Thurwell is not dead
The problem with hiring a famous actor to appear in two photographs and a bit of blurry night-vision footage as a decaying corpse is that it’s hard to believe that’s all James Nesbitt is there to do. But as this is the show that likes to kill off its guest actors at any point, is that a double bluff? Armchair detectives have gone so far as to suggest that Thurwell was in disguise as one of the Spanish police officers sent to raid his own hiding place. If the former bent copper is still alive, though, is he the man Davidson believed to be her father? Is he the one who can’t spell “definately”?
4/5 definatelys
DS Chris Lomax is OCG
As Kate put it, “Don’t act like a tit, Sarge”, but is there more to Lomax than meets the eye? He was reluctant to dig up the concrete floor of the gun factory, and viewers noticed that he said the team could be in the Red Lion soon, a pub with OCG links (though it is also the most common pub name in the UK). Operation Lighthouse was infested with OCG or its affiliates, from Ryan Pilkington to Davidson to DSI Ian Buckells. In for a penny, and all that: could Lomax be involved, too?
2/5 definatelys
Wee Chloe is bent
With Hastings getting the push from the police force, Steve Arnott addicted to painkillers, and Kate Fleming letting Jo Davidson take the fall for her shooting a bent copper after a Thelma & Louise diversion, the only person holding AC-12 together has been cool, calm and collected newcomer DC Chloe Bishop. It would be the mother of God of all twists if wee Chloe turned out to be the big baddie.
1/5 definatelys
