Sally Wainwright kept us on our toes with a thrilling escape
Line of Duty has left its mark on the television landscape. I don’t mean the fact that every drama you watch now has to star either Martin Compston or Vicky Mcclure. I mean that it’s impossible to watch a scene in which someone is transported in a prison van without bracing yourself for something terrible to happen.
Sally Wainwright, the writer of Happy Valley (BBC One), is no fool. And so she put Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton, thankfully now shorn of his terrible hair) in the back of that van on his way to court, knowing full well that viewers would be gnawing their fingers in anticipation of an ambush. Sgt Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) felt it too. “They could have someone blowing the doors off the bloody paddy wagon as we speak,” she warned her boss.
The journey was entirely uneventful. Wainwright doesn’t go for the obvious. Instead, the tension continued to build until Royce made his escape from the courtroom itself, in a break out masterminded by the Knezevic crime lords. As the gang’s two stooges staged a diversion outside, Royce dispatched two guards and scaled the glass wall of the dock (expect Norton to race back up the bookies’ list of potential James Bonds) before running to a nearby shop where a disguise was ready and waiting. Exit Royce, dressed as a Lycra-clad cyclist. It was brilliant, heart-thumping action.
Big boss Darius Knezevic made an appearance in this episode. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t someone so slick and sharp-suited. Nor did I expect abused housewife Joanna Hepworth to turn up in the garage of the family home, her body stuffed in a suitcase.
Faisal’s storyline is one of the most compelling of this series, but also slightly confounding. The last time we saw him, the chemist was in such a state of panic and fury that he battered Joanna with a rolling pin. The character’s trajectory has been that of a mild-mannered man who had dabbled in criminality without considering the consequences, and is now in horrifyingly over his head. Yet in this episode he switched modes; when he had a prang on the school run with none other than Joanna’s husband, Rob, he remained utterly cool, even asking the very irate Rob: “Is something else upsetting you?”
It will be interesting to see where the Faisal story goes from here, and whether it becomes more closely entwined with the other characters. There are two episodes to go. Cawood knows that Royce is coming for her, and we’re heading for an epic showdown. That retirement party may have to be postponed.
If you tuned into The Warship: Tour of Duty (BBC Two) expecting a serious study of Britain’s naval capabilities, well, there was a bit of that. But also this: “I’ve never seen so many penises in my life. Do you know what I mean?”
The series is the latest from veteran documentary-maker Chris Terrill, who has a knack for combing through a cast of thousands and finding the biggest characters. He did it in The Cruise – without Terrill, we would not have Jane Mcdonald – and now he has done it aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth, Britain’s biggest warship. The man discussing this proliferation of penises was Able Rating Ronnie Lambert. Ronnie has a big personality. Like the irrepressible lovechild of Lee Evans and Joe Swash, he bounded around the ship while keeping up a constant stream of chatter.
Ronnie told us about his bunkmate (“He sleeps for days. He’s half-man, half-mattress”) and the fake tans in his native Essex (“Full of orange people, it’s like Wotsits everywhere”). He joined the Navy to get away from his cocaine habit and, in this first episode, had a disciplinary hearing for going “a bit Awol. When I say a bit – quite a lot” on the day that his ship sailed. Ronnie is quite chaotic. But his commanding officer, who seemed tremendously kind, has a lot of time for Ronnie and his “piratical cheekiness”. “You could find an Able Rating Lambert in every century the Royal Navy has been operating,” he said.
Terrill focused on other characters too: the delightfully posh Sub Lieutenant John Hawke, who could have stepped out of a Jane Austen novel (“You need to get 600 hours of time on the bridge before you can qualify, so I see that as a bit like a curacy”); and endearingly naive Able Rating Helayna Birkett, aged 21, who joined up for the travel opportunities and chance to deliver humanitarian aid, but didn’t want to think too much about combat situations: “I really don’t know why I’m here. I don’t agree with war.”
This focus on a handful of people made the documentary tremendously engaging. Terrill conjured a real sense of life on board what Ronnie described as this floating “tin can”.
Happy Valley ★★★★★
The Warship: Tour of Duty ★★★★