Devilish details and a shocking conclusion
Remember No Way Out, the cracking 1987 thriller in which Kevin Costner was forced to launch a manhunt against himself? There are strong echoes of that in the fourth series of BBC One’s Line of Duty (Sunday), and good thing too.
We know from previous episodes that DCI Huntley (Thandie Newton) fought with volatile police forensics expert Tim Ifield (Jason Watkins) at his home the night of his death, and have seen her tampering with what might have been self-incriminating evidence. Last night, she continued to make herself look even more suspicious.
She seemed rather too eager to push her colleagues into believing that Ifield and (or?) lonely young loser Michael Farmer are the man-in-thebalaclava who has killed two women and tried to kill a third, and, later, that cleaner-cum-prostitute Hana is Ifield’s killer. She also seemed oddly surprised when a young woman came forward with information apparently confirming Farmer’s guilt. It wasn’t long before the AC12 internal affairs unit were catching up with the viewer and starting to “think the unthinkable”: that Huntley was involved in Ifield’s death.
As ever in this fourth series, the ensemble cast did their stuff impeccably. Newton maintained her air of simmering tension and Sphinxlike inscrutability, with AC12 investigator Martin Compston crisply authoritative as DS Arnott (the morally-driven terrier on her trail), and Vicky McClure’s undercover AC12 officer expertly keeping us guessing as to where her loyalties were drifting. There was also quietly excellent support from Claudia Jessie as Huntley’s loyal protégée, Jodie.
Where last night scored highly, too, was in Jed Mercurio’s teleplay, as credible in its personal relationships as in its forensic procedural details. And oh, how satisfying those details are. Newton and McCLure’s coppers were, for example, obliged to leave a video line-up room for fear that their mere presence (as officers familiar with the suspect) might influence the result. Is this kind of thing accurate? I’ve no idea – but boy does it feel it.
What’s more, Mercurio and director John Strickland expertly used scenes of police hack-work to let the energy lull slightly as the end neared, only to wallop us with a payoff as wrongfooting as it was brutal. After an agonising build-up that implicated none other than Huntley’s husband, Ray, in Ifeld’s death, what we can only assume was a balaclava-clad Ray took to Arnott with a baseball bat and then tipped him into a stairwell. We were left with the assailant dashing out past Arnott’s destroyed body, and with endless questions still unanswered. All too gripping for words.
There was gentler fodder on BBC One on Friday evening – well, superficially gentler at any rate. True, this adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s 1928 novel Decline and Fall has all the dulcet strings, cut-glass accents and easy-on-the eye trappings you’d expect of period drama. But in setting out to do that masterpiece of social satire full justice, it has also been sure to keep its teeth sharp.
Not far in, Captain Grimes was at the altar, miserably marrying the daughter of David Suchet’s Dr Fagan. Douglas Hodge’s “Oh God… here comes the bride” as she shuffled up the aisle towards him, along with his quite astonishing grimaces, were truly hilarious. The latter facial contortions suggested a fellow having a leg amputated without anaesthetic – which in fact was exactly what was happening elsewhere at the same time.
For, rather than look on as his daughter espoused such a loser, Fagan had decided instead to witness poor young Tangent (shot in the foot last week on sports day) having his by now entirely gangrenous limb amputated. The programme adroitly cut between this agonising separation and that arguably even more painful union.
Meanwhile, Jack Whitehall continued to delight as Paul Pennyfeather. Smitten by Eva Longoria’s lustrous Margot, who invited him to her angular country pile to tutor her son, he soon came up against architect and love-rival Otto. Whitehall’s innocent, warm-hearted Englishman proved a touching and comically rich foil for Anatole Taubman’s priapic Teutonic aesthete, and it was also bittersweet fun to watch him delight in Margot’s Latin American Entertainment Company, as yet unaware that his new fiancée is in fact a dedicated white-slaver.
Waugh is tricky to get right on screen, but there was barely a bum note in this lovingly crafted hour of elegant, acidulous entertainment. One suspects Mr W would have approved.