Why Britain’s hooked on a TV show with no glamour, laughs or sex
. . . and chilling echoes of Jimmy Savile AND Hillsborough
ON paper, it doesn’t sound like much. There are no devilishly handsome detectives, no car chases, no whizz-bang capers, no picturesque locations, no humour and no sex. Definitely no sex.
Yet this singular lack of glamour and sexual tension has not stopped BBC2 police corruption drama Line Of Duty from gripping the nation.
each Thursday evening, five million viewers — with many more watching later on catch-up — have tuned in to view the anti- corruption officers of a police department called aC12 do battle against bent coppers and the forces of evil in a bleak town that is never identified.
audiences have been baffled and thrilled in equal measure by the plot twists and turns, courtesy of series creator Jed Mercurio. What the heck is going on, Jed? Many fans watch each episode twice just to keep on top of developments.
a sometimes confusing storyline spools back to the original series in 2012, which featured gangland boss Tommy Hunter. ‘Who?’ viewers of the current series kept asking. He was killed following a botched attack on a police convoy in the second series — and now his name has cropped up on a list of possible paedophiles.
all these strands have been transmuted into a tale about historic child abuse; a scandal that has deliberate echoes of reallife Operation Yewtree, and involves a local politician, a former police chief, a children’s home and — clearly shown last week in a mocked-up photograph alongside Line Of Duty characters — Jimmy Savile.
This blurring of the lines between fiction and reality caused no little controversy, but Mercurio is unrepentant.
‘ It raises a very particular question about the relationship between the police and Jimmy Savile,’ he says. ‘The fact is that Savile bragged of his close relationships with officers.’
Hthey e SuggeSTS it was clear Savile enjoyed the protection, at the very least, of police officers — but what did get out of the deal?
In a week where the Hillsborough inquest raised once more the question of who polices the police, Line Of Duty’s themes of corruption, Masonic links and widespread cover-ups have stuck a chord with viewers.
The mood in Line Of Duty is relentlessly downbeat, the dialogue often sparse and blunt, while endemic drabness and bad haircuts seep into every scene. However, despite the endless grimness, this complex, claustrophobic series has become a classic.
Why? perhaps because it is the kind of old-fashioned thriller that is blacker than a policeman’s boot on a moonless nightshift — and performed by an impeccable cast. For many viewers, the most compelling character has been Detective Inspector Lindsay Denton, played by the marvellous Keeley Hawes.
This is the Spooks and Tipping The Velvet star as we have never seen her before: devoid of makeup, emotionally derelict and down on her luck.
She first cropped up in series two: an ambiguous character who was either terribly wronged or terribly wicked. an astonishing range of catastrophes have befallen the character played by Keeley, who lied to reporters to keep her return in series three a surprise for viewers.
Denton has been jailed, tortured with scalding water and — last week — murdered in one of the most shocking moments on the show. Did she deserve it? Who knows.
But the rest of the cast is just as compelling. The characterisation, the faultless connection between the actors and the taut script and the sheer dark-heartedness all make it a must- see. There are moments, for example, when I find it incredibly hard to believe that Superintendent Hastings, so brilliantly played by adrian Dunbar, is not actually Superintendent Hastings in real life.
His authority is absolute. He is the moral centre of the drama, the boss who leads a dedicated team of officers loathed by the rank and file they have to investigate. They include DS Steve arnott (Martin Compston), DC Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) and DI Matthew Cottan (Craig parkinson).
Viewers already know the vulpine Cottan is The Caddy: the traitor in their midst. Nicknamed Dot (after eastenders character Dot Cotton), his guilt has seeped out like something nasty dripping from a sewage pipe.
Dot has grown adept at lurking in the corner of the office, slurping mugs of tea and adopting extravagantly innocent expressions, even though he is as about as blameless as a smoking gun. He even thrashed himself with a pair of handcuffs to make it look as though another officer had attacked him.
But for how much longer can he continue to fool his colleagues? His superiors are so blind to his bad side that, last week, they gave him a medal for his troubles.
TONIgHT’S climax of the third series, a special 90-minute episode, will attempt to tie up the spaghetti of loose ends, suspicions, allegations, murders, bluffs, double bluffs and shocks that have characterised the action so far.
One of the most unusual aspects of this nail-biting drama is that a great deal of the action takes place in the arid confines of the aC12 interview room, where Hastings and his team take their suspects through the evidence.
a typical piece of dialogue goes something like this: ‘Now we turn to document three in your folder, which is a photocopy of a suicide report dated 21st November 1998. For the benefit of the tape, this is being projected on to the screen now.’
These interrogation scenes sometimes go on for a very long time. In the first episode, the grilling of the leader of an armed response unit went on for 17 minutes. In tonight’s episode, another extremely tense interview lasts for nearly 25 minutes of screen time.
In the chop- chop, bang-bang world of most police procedural shows — and in most TV dramas — scenes of such length are absolutely unheard of.
Much of Line Of Duty is just people sitting in a room talking — yet they are some of the most electrifying moments on television.
part of this is because it’s far from the usual kind of detective series. In contrast to most cop shows, the police refused to co-operate with producers because it is their policy not to do so on any dramas that portray police in a bad light.
Instead, the production team is advised unofficially both by retired police officers and anonymously by serving members of the force. This gives it a real edge.
perhaps one of the reasons Line Of Duty is so popular is that it deals with real issues, with crimes and misdemeanours that viewers have been reading about in the newspapers. and it treats its audience with intelligence and respect and is not afraid to throw in the occasional shock along the way.
We can expect much more of the same tonight . . .