Line of Duty

BBC1/iPlayer

****

DEAD of night. A phone rings at the Murder Investigations Team HQ, the news important enough to tear the boss away from the telly.

“We’ve just had a call from a CHIS* handler submitting information relevant to Vella,” barks the officer to his chief. “Intel has graded the info 1A on the Matrix.”

Eh? What is a CHIS? Who or what is Vella? 1A on the Matrix? What’s Keanu Reeves got to do with this?

And the soundtrack is getting louder, and the drums are beating like a heart about to burst, and now there’s a convoy of four vehicles going too fast down a street, and my mouth is dry and my armpits wet, and OMG I CAN’T COPE!

Yes, Jed Mercurio’s attempt to confound the claims of deodorant manufacturers continues with the sixth series of Line of Duty, which started last night at regulation breakneck pace. This lot make The Sweeney look like the Still Game mob.

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Everything has changed since the trio of Detective Superintendent Ted Hastings, DS Steve Arnott and DI Kate Fleming (Adrian Dunbar, Martin Compston, Vicky McClure) ended the last series with a dirty great cloud hanging over AC-12, the force's anti-corruption unit.

Yet at the same time nothing has changed. Ted continues to coin catchphrases (including one surely borrowed from Scotland, “Haud yer wheesht!”); Steve is still half man, half waistcoat; and Kate remains the smartest cookie in the biscuit tin, even if she does wear jumpers that look like knitted porridge.

Ah, but who is this woman striding confidently round the place, her Scots voice soft as a Spring lamb’s fleece but her determination made from girders? It’s DCI Joanne Davidson (Kelly Macdonald, her aff Trainspotting), the latest enigmatic officer who may, or may not, be linked to the network of bent coppers that AC-12 have been hunting from day one.

Davidson seemed like a sort you would trust. But then there was that business of spotting something iffy on the way to a raid. Was it sheer chance, or a carefully laid plan to let the suspect scarper? “That convoy was going like the clappers,” said Ted. “You’d do well to spot a pipe band in there.” Oh Ted, we’ve missed you.

Already, Mercurio is messing with our minds, and the distraction could hardly be more welcome.

Never mind Covid-19 and all those other jumbles of letters and numbers of the past year. Ted, Steve and Kate are back and the only thing they want to catch is the key to his whole mystery – H, the spider at the centre of the web.

Line of Duty has been a smash for lots of reasons. The tight as a tourniquet plotting. The sensational twists. The slick editing. But at its heart are the three main characters, the little family against the machine. Mercurio teased out more of their back stories. Steve is not a happy bunny, still necking the painkillers like sweeties; ditto Ted and Kate, each for their own reasons we cannot wait to learn more about.

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Yet we will wait. A whole week between each episode. Mercurio wants his police procedural screened old school, rather than every episode being made available at once on iPlayer. It is like being back in the 1970s with appointment to view TV, but without the stomach turning sexism.

As ever with Mercurio, women are front and centre of the action. Macdonald brings the star power previously exercised by Keeley Hawes and Thandie Newton. She is a tougher character to read than any of her predecessors. Could she be "H"?

By the end of episode one, millions will have been rushing to Google to decipher the clues. DCI Davidson was as troubled as any viewer. “Something doesn’t add up,” she said. You bet it doesn’t, but we live in hope that it will at some point. Just not yet.

*CHIS: a Covert Human Intelligence Source.