Lies have been the making of Line of Duty
Series creator Jed Mercurio talks to Benji Wilson about truth, secrets – and his police sources
Tomorrow night, the police corruption drama Line of Duty reaches the climax of its third series on BBC Two. It will have to go some way to top last week’s episode, which drew close to five million viewers and ended with traitor-within copper Matthew “Dot” Cottan (Craig Parkinson) putting a bullet in the head of the one-time villain Lindsay Denton (Keeley Hawes). Rest assured, however, that the 90-minute finale doesn’t disappoint.
Part of Line of Duty’s nerveshredding tension comes because at a time when television is blighted by plot details leaking online, the BBC Two show has proved particularly good at keeping its secrets. No one knew that Keeley Hawes would be coming back, let alone that she would then be summarily dispatched. The trick, says Jed Mercurio, the series’ creator, is simply to lie:
“When Keeley was asked directly she just lied and to be honest when I was asked directly I always lied as well; I had no qualms about it. That meant that BBC publicity could just refer to Keeley’s remarks without actually saying one way or the other. Her lie was key.”
If secrecy and a hearty fib has kept the audience guessing, Line of Duty adds a further level of ambiguity by blurring lines between fiction and reality. Last week’s episode included a mocked-up photo of Jimmy Savile consorting with a fictional MP and a fictional chief of police, as part of a long-term investigation into historic child sexual exploitation. There have been implications of Masonic connections among senior police, and the Dot Cottan storyline, which has run like a rotten vein through all three series, is founded on the idea that organised crime syndicates control certain officers.
It has been riveting drama – and Mercurio says it is all founded in truth.
“Line of Duty is a social realist drama so it’s set in a world that has the recognisable features of the authentic world we see around us. Within that world there is historic child sex abuse that has been perpetrated by certain public figures. I didn’t invent that.
“Showing this particular individual is pertinent because it raises a very particular question about the relationship between police and Savile. The fact is that Jimmy Savile bragged of his close relationships with officers. He even, according to a piece I read in the Telegraph a few years ago, would threaten junior officers with his close relationship with their bosses in order to get them to back off if they were asking uncomfortable questions. So we know what Savile was getting out of his relationship with police officers. The question that the drama is asking is what were police getting out of their relationship with Savile?”
Line of Duty makes it quite clear what he’s driving at – in the series a former senior police officer is shown to have quashed inquiries because he was abusing boys himself. But Mercurio will only talk in terms of questions that have yet to be asked:
“We know that in relation to a lot of allegations of child sexual exploitation by public figures such as Cyril Smith, Greville Janner and Jimmy Savile police investigations were suppressed and discontinued. What we don’t know is on whose orders and why they were discontinued and what that chain of command was.”
It’s not just Savile that is contentious. There was the suggestion of a Masonic handshake between the anti-corruption unit’s senior investigator Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) and former head of the vice squad Patrick Fairbank (George Costigan) in this series of Line of Duty. Once again, Mercurio says it is grounded in research. Although the police have never officially cooperated with Line of Duty (Mercurio says they don’t co-operate with series offering any negative view of policing), he has several contacts, one a senior investigator, who furnish him with details. “I had a very revealing conversation with him about his experiences of dealing with officers who were in the Masons. I think if you look at officers of the Hastings generation and Fairbanks generation, it was prevalent. What we’re talking about with those two characters is the historical relationship in terms of what’s going on now. I don’t really know what else I’m permitted to say, our adviser is a serving inspector, and I haven’t cleared it with him.”
But can we assume that he wouldn’t have put the story in there if his contact had said there wasn’t a hint of Freemasonry left in the police?
“Yeah it’s pretty safe to say that, yeah.”
As for Dot [who has been placed within the anti-corruption unit by a crime syndicate], Mercurio again points to his contacts and his research to say “that is a well-established modus operandi for organised crime. Rather than try to turn existing officers, they put one of their own guys into the force. That is an established phenomenon – I didn’t invent that.”
The surprising thing about Mercurio and his series is that though he seems so meticulous, much of his plotting is done on the hoof. “We do what’s right for each episode. We think a little bit about what happens next – just enough to be able to discount things that would be disastrous in story terms – but if anything isn’t catastrophic and it works in the episode then we’re inclined to stick with it. Then we pick up the pieces in the next episode and figure our way through it.”
The death of Danny Waldron (Daniel Mays) at the end of the first episode of this series was not set in stone. (“I’d delivered episode one with Danny alive and well; then I was jet-lagged on a work trip to Los Angeles and I just started thinking about the first episode again at 4am or 5am”). And there were several options for the exit or otherwise of Lindsay Denton.
“There were three competing scenarios. She could have succeeded and brought The Caddy [Cottan] in or another scenario could have been that Dot framed her for some crime. Each of the scenarios was considered – that [killing off Denton] felt to all of us that it was the best thing to do in the story in that moment and also in relation to the series as a whole.”
Mercurio is currently writing series four of Line of Duty, which will be filmed in the autumn. I ask him to outline the plot, and he laughs…
“There will be an investigation of alleged police corruption perpetrated by an officer played hopefully by a high-profile actor…”
I tell him I’ve sensed a little nervousness or hesitation on the part of Hastings in the recent episodes. Could the moral backbone, the cleanest copper of the lot, the head of the fearless anti-corruption unit, be next under the microscope?
“I can’t tell you, I wouldn’t tell you, and if I did, I’d have to lie.”