Holding the line again for gripping TV thrills
Line of Duty BBC1, Sunday Claire Byrne Live RTÉ One, Monday This Is My House BBC1, Wednesday
Some time around 10 past nine last Sunday night, half of Ireland and Britain was sitting in front of a computer screen, frantically Googling the acronym CHIS. It is, it transpires, cop-speak for Covert Human Intelligence Source and it featured strongly in the first episode of the sixth series of BBC’s Line Of Duty, which made a storming return just when we most needed a bit of meaty drama.
Writer Jed Mercurio has form here – who can forget the same effect ‘kompromat’ had when Bodyguard aired three years ago? – and my, he loves a good acronym. Indeed, when Comic Relief showed a spoof episode a few years ago, the highlight was DI Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) telling Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) that she relaxed the previous night by listening to REM on her MP3 before watching DIY SOS on the BBC.
The CHIS in this case was supplying information on the killer of journalist Gail Vella, murdered in cold blood as she got out of her car (Vella is a Maltese name, and no doubt Mercurio had the real-life case of Daphne Caruana Galizia in mind), but just as the police were driving to arrest the suspect, DCI Joanne Davidson (brilliant guest star Kelly Macdonald) spotted a robbery in progress at a betting shop.
The diversion gave the suspect a chance to escape, so did Davidson do it deliberately? After all, you’d want to have hawk eyes to spot a robbery in progress on a side street as you drove a hundred metres away on a main road at speed.
Enter AC-12, the anti-corruption unit headed by Supt Ted Hastings (the incomparable Adrian Dunbar) to take a closer look at Davidson, especially since she is now the subject of a complaint by whistleblower PC Farida Jatri. What Jatri has not yet declared, though, is that she has been having a clandestine romance with Davidson, who unilaterally ended the relationship. So, is this just a vexatious complaint to get the ultimate payback, or is Davidson really a dirty cop?
We have six more delicious episodes to look forward to for the answers to those questions and the great delight is that production during a pandemic has not stunted the show’s ability to grip from the off (riot gear with face shields will, no doubt, feature quite a lot, given that it is the ultimate PPE).
And, of course, there is the great delight in knowing the entire population of these islands becomes ever more familiar with Irish expressions hitherto unknown to them; no doubt many a parent from Durham to Dover this week was telling a noisy child to ‘houl your whisht’.
Since we last saw DI Fleming, she has left AC-12 to rejoin the regular force. Now, being asked to spy on her new boss Davidson, she faces a dilemma. ‘Either I am accused of being a traitor, or become one to avoid being accused,’ she mutters.
This moral ambiguity has always been at the very heart of Line of Duty and while I enjoyed the similar Bloodlands, also from the Mercurio stable, it’s quite clear it was only a palate tickler before the real main course was served up. One episode in, we’re already sucking diesel.
There was some welcome meat too in the discussion on Claire Byrne Live on RTÉ One on Monday about the prospect of a reunited Ireland and how that country might look. It opened with a discussion between Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar. Despite rancorous blood between the two recently over the investigation of Mr Varadkar’s sharing of the GP contract with a doctors’ union, their thoughts were considered and neither tore strips off the other, a welcome piece of civility we need to see more of in these polarised political times.
There was a typically bullish conDS tribution from the DUP’s Gregory Campbell, participating on a video feed from a living room that rather appropriately appeared to have been unchanged since partition.
Campbell is a man with a seeming inability to say the word yes, so we knew what his contribution would be from the start. Nonetheless, there are many of us in this jurisdiction who need to look at ourselves before calling out his intransigence. If the debate were about Ireland rejoining the UK, I’m sure most of us would be just as strident in our opposition.
All in all, the debate only highlighted the hurdles any move to reunification would face and in a time of Covid, we surely have enough on our plate without rushing into a referendum.
The surprise treat of the week, came in a programme I watched out of duty more than desire. BBC1’s This Is My House managed to breathe new life into a tired format, as a celebrity panel tried to correctly figure out who was the real owner of a converted barn in Kent. Four people – three women and a man – claimed to be and all were entirely convincing. Not only that, there was a great undercurrent of bitchiness between two of them that added a lot of sport to the proceedings.
My view on who was telling the truth veered wildly across the hour, proof that a job in AC-12 probably is not for me. I’ll never make it as a covert house intelligence source, though that’s A-OK with me.