LINE OF DUTY
Top TV writers on that ending.
SO, AC-12 HAS closed its doors. Possibly for the last time. Series 6 of Jed Mercurio’s hit BBC corrupt-cop thriller came to an end in May, and immediately seemed to split the nation down the middle. Yes, our intrepid heroes — Steve Arnott, Kate Fleming and Ted Hastings — finally got their mitts on H and lived to fight another day. But there was also a suggestion that the corruption they’re trying to root out is too systemic for them to truly get to grips with and, with AC-12 now under new management, it wasn’t the triumphant ride off into the sunset that some had been hoping for. “We knew a ‘down’ ending would rate less favourably with some viewers,” tweeted Mercurio. But he went for it anyway. Brave or foolish? We asked three TV writers — people who know how hard it is to stick the landing — to give us their very personal reactions to the finale.
RUFUS JONES WRITER OF HOME
So, who was it going to be? The Fourth Man. The Artist Formally Known As H? Kate? Definately maybe. Ted? Come on, do you think I just floated up the Lagan in a bubble? At one stage, I wondered if it might be Tommy Jessop. Still quite like that idea.
Look, the finale of Line Of Duty always risked being a victim of its own success. Which character, realistically, would have quenched our national bloodlust?
Jed Mercurio — in an astounding example of nominative determinism — has always been a mercurial writer, and the show has always been brilliantly contrary. For some, Buckells felt like a let-down. To quote Brando in Apocalypse Now, he seemed like an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill. We wanted H to go right to the very top, an All The President’s Men toppling of the king. Owen Teale in his fucking hat.
But the national obsession with Line Of Duty’s whodunnit was a reflection of our current real-world maelstrom of conspiracy theories. A world where Qanon stormed the Capitol building and Covid deniers edgelorded it down the Twat Aisle at Asda. Barnard Castle became a very British grassy knoll. Dominic Cummings the patsy, a sort of Lee Harvey Oswald Mosley.
It felt like Mercurio looked at how overwhelmed with conspiracy theories we all were, and decided that — contrarily — Line Of Duty had the opportunity to deliver a dose of realistic thinking. That corruption is not one man but institutional. Viral. You can try and lock it down, but it goes on for ever. And the days when those in the highest seats of power were accountable are over. It’s an ending that grows more satisfying and sophisticated with time. Mercurio at his most mercurial.
SARAH PHELPS WRITER OF A VERY ENGLISH SCANDAL AND THE ABC MURDERS
Of course it had to be him, didn’t it? Buckles. Or Buckells. (However you spell it, I’ll always be thinking, weirdly, of Adam Buxton.) It wasn’t the operatic, “I am your father, Luke,” confrontation of Philip Osborne and Steve Arnott, it was the sly, bitter poetry of Buckells, a man soused in banal villainy. At least the last sight we had of that guilty, corrupt bastard was him shaking like a shitting dog, clutching his prison-issue bog roll like it was going to save him from screeching hell. At least we had that.
It’s been a long road for AC-12, a road littered with dead bodies, howling grief, deranged conspiracy theories, souls traded for a mess of potage, reputations trashed, filthy lies, tawdry bargains and incalculable loss and suffering. What started with Tony Gates’ free panini is over. We’ve had Ted-isms, acronyms, Jackie Laverty in a fridge, Roz Huntley’s festering wrist, Denton’s revenge, Danny Waldron’s righteous, brutal vengeance, John Corbett’s horrific, squalid death, choking in blood on a concrete floor, lovely Maneet’s heartstopping murder, burner phones, golf jumpers and the so-called suicide of my personal hero, Oliver Stephens-lloyd. We’ve watched fictional damage unfurl from real stories of police corruption and the monstrous, unforgivable sins of the powerful. We’ve seen our heroes get older, more compromised, more isolated from anything that could be called a normal life.
There were A Lot Of Feelings about the finale. A Lot. No-one was shy about airing Their Many Feelings and Jed got pretty sassy on Main. But how do you end a show like that and satisfy
everyone? You are never, ever going to be able to serve everyone’s idea of what the ending should be. Never. And why should you? You can only serve the particular spirit of this gnarly beast of a show. This was more low-key, an elegy to the grind of actual work. It felt completely right, to me. A monster, leashed by its owner.
So, thank you Line Of Duty, for the memories. But I will never, ever get over the fact that not one single person attended Lindsay Denton’s funeral.
Never.
She should have been carried shoulder-high and this is a hill I will die on.
ANDREW ELLARD
SCRIPT EDITOR AND STORY PRODUCER ON RED DWARF, THE DETECTORISTS AND INTELLIGENCE
One of the ways to know if your story is working is to see if it passes the ‘anecdote test’. If you told it out loud, would it be compelling?
Line Of Duty’s final episode this year was mostly about tidying up the loose ends and lacked the beloved interrogation-room fireworks we showed up for. Not inadequate, but nothing I’m going to describe in the pub to someone I call “mate” a little too often.
You can trace this problem back to the last two series’ move away from Columbo-style ‘try-to-get-away-with-it’ thrillers. Where once the guest star was a strangely empathetic co-lead fighting to evade the Hitchcockian pressures of guilt and AC-12 (never has writing a number on an evidence bag been more thrilling), being on-side with a bent copper has been toned down in favour of more ‘what’s going on?’ business. Series 6’s finale is the cost of this change. It’s a muted ending that invites suspicion about the process.
For the DIR I am now showing image JM01. JM01 is a photographic cameo of actor Jimmy Nesbitt.
I put it to you that the interview fireworks at the end of this series were meant to be supplied by the arrival of a big guest star. That said guest star was booked for the final episodes until shooting was shut down for Covid and remounted later in the year. I further propose that making use of the regular cast would be an efficient way to complete filming within safety bubbles, and that this is exactly the kind of thing you keep quiet about to a) avoid any suggestion that the series was compromised, and b) to cover up the fact that Nesbitt will be a big player next series.
You don’t have to answer. I think we’re done here.