Don't bother, they're here
Best Drama Series
The Crown (Netflix)
The End of the F***ing World (Netflix/Channel 4)
Gentleman Jack (HBO/BBC One)
Giri/Haji (BBC Two)
Best Mini-Series
Chernobyl (Sky Atlantic)
A Confession (ITV)
The Victim (BBC One)
The Virtues (Channel 4) Continue reading “2020 British Academy Television Awards nominations”
“There’s no secrets in AC12”
So we make it to the end of Series 5 of Line of Duty and it was a lot wasn’t it. A properly tragic couple of deaths, a deep suspicion of a core team member or two and perhaps inevitably, one step forwards and two steps back in the ongoing H conspiracy.
Jed Mercurio’s plotting remains as tightly wound and full of surprises as ever, the reveals in the organised crime group were well done but I think the gang stuff was nowhere near as much fun as the internecine conflicts within the police force itself. Continue reading “TV Review: Line of Duty (Series 5)”
“Watch what I do, not what I say”
So Series 4 of Jed Mercurio’s Line of Duty winds up to its insanely tense climax and once again it satisfies the requirements of event TV – giving some answers but withholding others, in the full anticipation of further seasons in which to explore the overarching stories that still remain. This did also mean that it didn’t quite push all of my buttons the way I would have liked for it to be as spectacular as the end to Series 3.
With the Caddy arc being resolved so thoroughly then, I very much enjoyed the fresh slate of AC12’s investigation of an entirely new case here (review of Episode 1 here). And Thandie Newton’s superbly slippery DCI Roz Huntley was an excellent antagonist, the potential framing of a suspect being only the beginning of the twistiest of tales that threatened to swallow up any and everyone around her, good or bad, corrupt or misogynist. Continue reading “TV Review: Line of Duty Series 4”
“Don’t make out I’m in the wrong”
After three superlative, and interlinked, series, one might have forgiven Jed Mercurio for leaving Line of Duty as it was. But the show has been a victim of its own slow-burning success and so a fourth series has arrived, with a plum Sunday evening slot in the schedule to boot and the good folk of AC-12 are once again with us. And having most cleverly toyed with its structure of featuring a high profile lead guest star in the previous series, the arrival of Thandie Newton as this year’s bent cop (or is she…) left us pondering how the hell are they going to top Series 3’s opening instalment.
Well, like this is how! The beauty of Line of Duty has been how it has increasingly embraced its batshit mental moments with the intense realism that comes from its peerless interrogation scenes. It is both silly and serious and it pulls it off with real élan – so much so that you don’t care how ridiculous it is that Vicky McClure’s Kate can still slide in to work undercover in police stations that are down the road from her own or that forensics guys apparently aren’t so hot at telling whether people are dead or not. Continue reading “TV Review: Line of Duty Series 4 Episode 1”
“The world’s changing. It’s not going to go back to the way it was”
There’s something admirable in actors who remain loyal to their roots – I’m thinking of the likes of Maxine Peake who has established a good deal of her stage career in her native North West and now Vicky McClure, who is making her professional stage debut in Nottingham, the town of her birth. Riding high on sterling TV credits like This is England and Line of Duty, she likely had opportunities aplenty in London theatres so it is salutary that it is to Nottingham Playhouse she has turned.
And not only that, it is to a local play by a local writer, Stephen Lowe’s Touched, which lends the 1977 play a real sense of authenticity (and more exposure to Nottingham dialect than I’ve ever had before!). Set in 1945 in the 100 day period between VE Day and VJ Day, it focuses on the lives of the women left holding the country together in this time of great upheaval, which shows no signs of slowing down as a new Labour government look set to win the election and nuclear bombs about to fall. Continue reading “Review: Touched, Nottingham Playhouse”
“There’s a line. It’s called right and wrong and I know which side my duty lies”
Well, that’s what you call a series finale! After the brilliant fake-out of Danny Waldron not being the new Tony Gates or Lindsay Denton, Jed Mercurio’s Line of Duty took us further than we ever could have dared into the murky world of police corruption, weaving together story strands from all three series into an overarching conspiracy thriller that has to rank as one of the televisual highlights of the year so far.
“We’re all in this together. Best way”
The first two series of Line of Duty have been an unqualified success for BBC2 and Jed Mercurio and so this third series has definitely been much anticipated chez Clowns, even if I’m not Daniel Mays’ biggest fan, he being trailed as the actor to take on the Lennie James/Keeley Hawes role as the Big Bad for this series. I should warn you now that spoilers will abound in this review of the first episode!
First off, I loved it. Resisting the temptation to feckle too much, Mercurio presents a very smart spin on the familiar world of AC-12 and its attempts to snuff out corruption in the police force. This time round, we’re left in no doubt as to whether the cop did it, the taut opening sequence sees May’s Sergeant Danny Waldron lead his armed response unit on an op which ends with him shooting the suspect in the head three times execution-style and then coercing his colleagues into a cover-up. Continue reading “TV Review: Line of Duty Series 3 Episode 1”
“We underestimated her”
The first series of Line of Duty was well-received by critics and audiences alike, hence a second series of Jed Mercurio’s police show being commissioned. With the centre of the anti-corruption team AC-12’s investigation DCI Gates having reached a conclusion of sorts, their attentions are turned onto Keeley Hawes’ DI Lindsay Denton, the sole survivor of an ambush on a witness protection scheme that leaves three police officers dead. Suspicions are aroused by some suspect decision-making on her part but it’s soon evident that there’s much more to the case, not least in the tendrils that connect it to the past.
Series 1 was very good but Series 2 seriously raises the bar, firstly by engaging in some Spooks-level business in casting the excellent Jessica Raine and well…spoilers, but secondly in getting from Hawes the performance of a lifetime in a masterpiece of a character. Denton is so multi-faceted that she’d beat a hall of mirrors at its own game and from her manipulative use of HR to her way with noisy neighbours to the shocking abuse she suffers in custody to the machinations of her superiors, the slipperiness of this woman is merciless and magisterial in its execution, its inscrutable nature utterly compelling. Continue reading “TV Review: Line of Duty Series 2”
“Do you want me to recrime it sir?”
With Jed Mercurio’s Line of Duty about to start its third series on BBC2, I thought I’d go back to the first two series as they have to rank as some of the best police dramas out there. Centred on the world of AC-12, an anti-corruption unit charged with investigating suspected police wrongdoing, we’ve been so far blessed with two extraordinary stories, hanging on superb performances from the people under suspicion – Keeley Hawes (whose series we’ll get to next) and Lennie James.
James plays DCI Tony Gates, a decorated officer with an amazing clear-up rate that seems too good to be true, and so when he comes to the attention of AC-12, initially for something completely unrelated, the wheels are set in motion for a fast-degenerating state of affairs. Money laundering, drug running, cover-ups, and gruesome murders intertwine and intersect with Gates at the heart of it all, but his true connections to events always in question, right until the end. Continue reading “TV review: Line of Duty Series 1”
Best Actor
Benedict Cumberbatch – Sherlock as Sherlock Holmes (BBC One)
Toby Jones – Marvellous as Neil Baldwin (BBC Two)
James Nesbitt – The Missing as Tony Hughes (BBC One)
Jason Watkins – The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies as Christopher Jefferies (ITV)
Best Actress
Georgina Campbell – Murdered by My Boyfriend as Ashley Jones (BBC Three)
Keeley Hawes – Line of Duty as DI Lindsay Denton (BBC Two)
Sarah Lancashire – Happy Valley as Catherine Cawood (BBC One)
Sheridan Smith – Cilla as Cilla Black (ITV) Continue reading “2015 British Academy Television Awards nominations”