Line of Duty
BBC1
★★★★☆
Did you lunge for the pause button at the end of Line of Duty to try to decipher who is Jo Davidson’s secret relative? Of course you did. I rewound Ted Hastings turning over that sheet four times: fat lot of good that it did. They were never going to make it easy for us to see her DNA match, thus ruining their cliffhanger. We do know that the name made Ted gasp, “Mother of God,” but then he gasps “Mother of God” every week. I have my suspicions about who it could be (more later), as I’m sure do you.
This was an episode of two halves, the first half-hour being snoringly slow and the second being the exact opposite. The only highlight early on was Ian Buckells, aka “young Noddy Holder”, being interviewed by AC-12 officers who revealed that he once exchanged racy texts with a female suspect. She asked: “Will you show me your trunshon [sic]?” And he replied: “And my helmet.” I laughed, but then I am quite childish.
It was tasty to resurrect the bent lawyer Jimmy Lakewell (Patrick Baladi), who was keeping his head down in Blackthorn Prison. He was straight in with a dig about Steve Arnott’s height. That’s the second go at “shortarse” Steve. No wonder he’s a painkiller junkie.
It was obvious that Lakewell wouldn’t last long when AC-12 sprang him from prison. People are only taken in those vans to facilitate a set piece in which masked gunmen stage an ambush. We were overdue a balaclava shootout so it was a relief to get a bit of the old va-va-voom. Ludicrous, of course, that they would return Lakewell, a walking target, to jail after all that. But it suited the plot so we must suspend disbelief. Wasn’t the throttler OCG member Lee Banks from series five?
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I took that long glance Lakewell had exchanged with Arnott earlier as meaning that he had confessed something to him while they were in that van, but then we are in the Ministry of Funny Looks so you never know. Incidentally, last week I said Buckells couldn’t find his backside with both hands; this week Arnott said he couldn’t organise “a piss-up in a brewery”. I prefer my analogy. He could barely stop his hands shaking as he made tea in that cell just before the “rat” was punished. At least he was putting the milk in first. Detective Superintendent? More like Mr Plod in Toyland.
Meanwhile, poor old Ted is being put out to pasture at AC-12. Maybe they could bring Kate Fleming back. Or even give her a decent line of dialogue. It was a bit careless of evil babyface Ryan Pilkington to push his muzzle into Davidson’s neck in the street where anyone could see, but it’s best not to ponder the implausibilities or you’d never stop.
The long teases are always irritating and they are certainly milking Davidson’s secret laptop chats. It was the cliffhanger last episode, yet it barely moved on. Is she the secret sister of John Corbett? Jackie Laverty? I reckon she could be related to the gangster Tommy Hunter, who had Matthew “Dot” Cottan as his inside man in series one, but that’s only because they’re both Scottish. And she told Farida that she didn’t have family.
Part of me still suspects that Davidson will turn out to be a goodie but maybe that’s what they want us to think. Anyway, this was the first four-star episode this series. Better late than never.
