Series 6 of Line of Duty makes a strong case that it is time to put the show out to pasture
“You have no idea what she’s capable of, none at all”
The problem with being a hugely anticipated returning serial drama is that people will have expectations. Jed Mercurio’s Line of Duty has built in stature over the years with a cracking set of stories set in police anti-corruption unit AC-12, blending self-contained star-driven individual cases each year with a long-running throughline of institutional wrongdoing reaching up to the highest offices in the police force.
For Series 6, that first aspect has been executed fairly well. Kelly Macdonald’s DCI Jo Davidson is the officer under suspicion of connections to the organised crime group who have governed so much of the wrongdoing in the show at large and as the secrets of her life have been peeled back, it has been quite gripping to watch, particularly under the manipulations of Gregory Piper’s evil sleeper PC Ryan Pilkington.
But in too many other places, the show has missed its own high bar. Chief among its problems is its dissolution of the core team. With Vicky McClure’s Kate Fleming now working in Davidson’s team rather than AC-12, her key connection with Martin Compston’s Steve Arnott is irrevocably botched as their previous closeness is replaced with baffling conversations about chasing ‘real’ criminals versus corrupt officers, flying in the face of all that has gone before.
It further doesn’t help that the sanctimonious tone of Arnott and the sainted Ted (Adrian Dunbar) is undercut by the former hiding a painkiller addiction and the latter being compromised over some missing money, each coming to know about the other whilst still pontificating righteously. Drafting in new AC-12 officer Chloe Bishop simply exacerbates thing despites Shalom Brune-Franklin’s fine work, as she’s so poorly integrated into the team. She does almost all the policework off-screen, presents key evidence to the team who barely acknowledge her, it’s really badly done.
Throw in some of the more incredulous plot points the whole show has ever attempted (the Thelma and Louise moment? Pur-lease) and this series becomes near-inexplicable. By the point that the long sought-after H becomes renamed the Fourth Man and the tendrils back as far as Series 1 come into play with a big reveal, it is all just a bit underwhelming. You long for Anna Maxwell Martin’s utterly iconic DCS Carmichael – a late re-appearance here – to actually kick the whole thing properly into shape rather than being a victim of Mercurio’s barely disguised agitprop (that po-faced epilogue…!).
