LINE OF DUTY: cop-on-cop action TV procedural that demands analysis

This gets us back to the single OCG fallacy, I think?

Does Witness Protection have a deal with Match.com to find you a compatible partner these days?

I was thinking about the way Steve’s drug test / back pain drama ended (is this the most famous back pain in British screen history?) and I thought it was very moving. It didn’t get wrapped up into leverage for Carmichael or whatever - it was just the gaffer finding a way to help Steve that Steve couldn’t wriggle out of. The relief when Steve realised that he wasn’t in trouble, and that he had an ally, was tremendously affecting.

On the subject of whether he’s boring or not - he definitely is, of course, and so is Kate and so is the gaffer. Part of that is the convention of cops in cop shows, that they have only the bare husk of a private life because they’re so wrapped up in the job. But I think it’s also that the actors playing these characters are, let’s put it charitably, limited. Dunbar can do a little scenery-chewing when called upon but for the most part these are cardboard TV characters who have about four different ways to look worried. And that’s kind of what makes the show so loveable to me. None of these guys are above their station. The show isn’t sexy or cool - like Bodyguard edged into - it’s “nice one, mate.” What’s unusual is the number of twists you get, and the spy vibes of corrupt cops pretending to be different things to different people. These dullards are in the thick of it - and actually hanging in there among actually clever baddies!

It’s the difference between a plot-based show and a character-based one imo. That’s why people liked Ted so much, he was the only one with a semblance of a personality to him.

Yeah otm.

I've never been that arsed about the daft as fuck labyrinth plotting in this show - more buzzing off the ambience when they bring in some fool for questioning.

Tracer Hand, I like your post - certainly agree that Kate Fleming qualifies as very naff, and all the rest, and Steve not much better - but I think you underrate Dunbar, who has done tons of other diverse acting and directing work. To me he brings the grain that makes it all worthwhile. Without him I think it would be down to 'complex plot and suspense'; with him it has texture and feeling.

I think Dunbar is excellent, everyone else who works for AC12 is Yozzer Hughes in a manner. "Gissa job - I could do that"

I think Compston’s good too, in a not-exactly-rewarding role. It’s a non-twerpy performance of a twerpy character. Admittedly he shouldn’t ever do cold turkey scenes again.

The acting reminds me a little of the non-Patrick Stewart acting in Star Trek TNG — iconic performances by limited performers, well-matched to their characters.

e.g. McClure’s wooden responses feels like the right fit for Kate Fleming, a tryhard who repeatedly struggles to make emotional connections

Yeah and it’s not quite fair to say Dunbar’s only difference is big set-piece scenery chewing. He’s regularly able to show some inner life - you can see the wheels turning. He’s good at finding little moments.

Chuck T: It's very amusing that every time Kate "goes undercover" (one of her special skills) she plays an identical character - a slightly more ingenuous version of herself, who repeatedly says "Boss ... I'm here if you ever want to talk" to suspects.

(Her other special skill is shooting people with guns.)

McClure largely acts on this show like she's fronting a corporate training video.

I thought the finale was good, actually, and the more I think about it the more I like it. People choosing now to complain about bad dialogue and weird pacing come across like they're just watching it for the first time. Plotwise and thematically it worked extremely well. H may have been found, but he was a symptom of the rot, not the cause. Meanwhile the chief constable may not have any direct connection to the OCGs, but is clearly corrupt as fuck in his own way and will never be held to account for it. And the three main AC-12ers had downbeat but satisfying conclusions to their arcs. I feel once some viewers get over their disappointment in the relative lack of obvious catharsis, they will re-evaluate the conclusion quite positively.

Also with the Jimmy Nesbitt photo they pulled off the ultimate "big name gets killed off straight away" move.

Yeah that was good.

I agree about the ending. The whole point of 'Institutionalised corruption' is complacency, collusion, a phone call here and there, no follow-up. If there was one big baddie inside the police pulling strings on behalf of an OCG - or even several OCGs - then the chief constable and Carmichael would be right - a few bad apples, weed them out, nothing to see.

Also a point about how easy is it is to succumb to corruption - Hastings breaking the rules for what he perceives as noble reasons, Jo doing so her whole life because she is coerced. They don't see themselves as bent, but the effect on the integrity of the system is the same, whatever the motives. It's not too big a leap from altruistically bunging a widow fifty grand to burying some evidence or whatever to help a mate out.

Episodes 6:5-6 strongly implied that Carmichael was corrupt, if only through her actions.

At the end that notion seemed to have vanished?

I think there is a slight weakness of LoD here, that it leans heavily on an idea then acts like it never happened.

In 6:7 it was noticeable, and a big relief, how much Carmichael allowed the AC-12 people to get on with solving the crime. Buckells stated that she wasn't participating in his interview so that she would avoid later flak for it - OK - but that doesn't really explain why, having interfered with them almost to the point of firing or imprisoning them, she then just stepped out of the way for almost the whole final episode, rather than eg: continuing to obstruct the investigation.

Yeah it was curious.

Yes agreed. I see it as another "fakeout" for suspense! drama! reasons but it's quite glaring. PLUS I refuse to believe RACE CLAIM + H wasn't anything, that's way better than the 4 dots nonsense!

I agree with chap. From people's reactions to the episode I was expecting Carmichael to come abseiling through a window with double machine guns or something equally ludicrous. (The guardian headline I glimpsed called it 'audacious and deranged'.)

I do wonder what kind of terrible 'anonymising' chat program they were using that left transcripts and traceable IP addresses all over the hard drive.

Sorry, do you mean 'internet protocol' addresses?

So, er, who ordered the murder of Gail Vella?

Oh yes, can't have been buckles!

Overall I don't think I understand the story. But I did love the programme.

IP possibly the only expanded acronym in the whole series

also what bad guys are still using 1996 laptops rather than burner Androids with Signal

Oh yes, can't have been buckles!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK5o3yRwhMQ

xp boomers

Now gagging to read the John Lanchester novelisation: "As DS Ian Buckles switched on his personal laptop computer and opened the secure messaging application he had installed on it..."

I don't know much about these things but 'IP' is very often used to indicate 'Intellectual Property'. I think I sometimes get confused about this.

You're not the only one
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/uk-govt-ip-address-is-intellectual-property-address.ars

I'm guessing any organised crime gang that relied on Buckles probably wasn't that shit-hot on cybersecurity?

Personally I enjoyed the anticlimatic H reveal but not entirely convinced about how Buckles manages to be (a) a useless ne'er-do-well and (b) the lightning-reflexed overseer of the LOD panopticon at the same time

ILX poster Luna Schlosser queried whether LoD was great UK TV, and suggested it was overvalued due to hysteria.

I disavow the hysteria, but on reflection one can at least be more precise about placing the programme in TV drama history.

Say at one end you have soaps: EASTENDERS and BROOKSIDE have been the best known to me; such programmes now seem to go out c.5 nights a week, unthinkable when I was a child.

And at another end you have one-off dramas, TV films. The BBC4 biopics (Cilla Black, Kenneth Williams) would be examples, but there must be others that would seem less generic.

Close to this end you have single series, usually no more than 6 episodes. That would include BLACKSTUFF and EDGE OF DARKNESS, which I am content to think of as benchmarks. It would also include adaptations eg: the 1994 MIDDLEMARCH. In fact between this category and one-off dramas you also have short series, eg: a two-part adaptation of something.

Then back towards the soaps you have recurring series, which are rarer than soaps but that keep coming back over years. SPOOKS, PEAKY BLINDERS, LUTHER would be examples. CASUALTY would be an extreme example: it started in 1986 and has had 35 series !! I suppose most of the famous acclaimed US TV programmes like BREAKING BAD, GAME OF THRONES are technically like this too. Presumably so is SHERLOCK, but SHERLOCK is an unusual example of playing a 'quality card' by having long episodes (90 minutes?) and not making many of them - scarcity as value - so it feels very different from CASUALTY et al.

LoD belongs in this bracket. I think it is the best drama of that kind (recurring series) that I can remember in the UK (but not the best in the world). I think it is also better than lots of programmes in the 'less frequent' categories, eg: many of us would agree that it's better than lots of BBC biopics.

I sense that two things that make LoD seem better than the average series in its category are:
a) the innovation of the interview / interrogation as an intense, extended format, which LoD has deliberately made a trademark
b) Adrian Dunbar bringing grain.

I think that without these two elements, it would seem more like an average recurring police procedural series.

I would add c) a near constant moral vertigo as alliances and alibis shift almost by the episode, making every single character's motives questionable. You don't get that in Inspector Morse.

Yes, I think one could also add the tendency to sudden shocks, major character deaths, etc, mentioned by Mark S at the very start of this thread -- I think that is a big feature of LoD that may have become normalised / more taken for granted than it was.

The start of the thread always puts me off because of the bad and mistaken reference to Cary Grant. I preferred Mark's long-ago comparison of Elvis Costello to Bryan Ferry, unconvincing as it probably was.

re the Quality Television question (which goes at least as far back as MTM and HILL STREET BLUES) and LoD, I realise that a relevant factor at the back of my mind has always been that the LRB (!!) ran a little article on LoD, in a way that it has rarely done for other programmes in this format (or for most TV in truth).

Or did it? Now that I search, I can't find it.

One thing that distinguishes it from other British series is that right from the start it assimilated visceral violence in a way that hadn't been seen before quite like it on British TV I think. This still makes me pause: for example in series 4 when the disturbing forensics guy is astride an unconscious DCI Huntley preparing to carve her up - I do have thoughts of "Is my life so barren and empty I need this kind of hard core shock for entertainment?". But at the same time I have to recognise that LOD does this well, mostly - and this is part of its appeal for me.

Are you kidding? UK cop series aren't commissioned these days if they don't have at least one gruesome autopsy scene per episode.

That's on top of all the other gratuitously violent scenes they have.

You could be right. I graduated to LoD via The Bill without dabbling in the wider murky waters of the Uk crime drama world and the autopsy sub-genre.

Missing from pinefox's list (I think?) are recurring series that don't have storylines that carry from one episode to the next - which is how most crime series used to be. So, ironically, The Bill is actually closer to Line of Duty than something like The Sweeney.

The Bill did once have semi-comedic episode centred around the severed finger of a criminal in a jar of pickled onions. That was probably my fave ep.

Yeah, Cracker (early 90s) had its fair share of visceral violence and there's probably plenty of others

I sense that two things that make LoD seem better than the average series in its category are:
a) the innovation of the interview / interrogation as an intense, extended format, which LoD has deliberately made a trademark
b) Adrian Dunbar bringing grain.

Prime Suspect was the front runner for both on these IMHO.

The early Prime suspects were multi episode series, based on a single crime where they often catch the perpetrator very early on, and the rest is all about making the evidence stick and the long interrogation scenes, with new evidence changing the dynamic within the interrogation room throughout the episodes.

Helen Mirren was also bringing the grain in SPADES.

the later series' had a crime per episode which watered everything down for a 'all resolved before you go to bed on a Sunday' experience. IIRC

Where LoD works is that the perpetrators are often police who have interrogation training, so it chances the dynamic, with all the one rank senior business. That's where its strength was.

A nice mix of both styles was S4: where it was all cop on cop action but there was no doubt on the crime, it was about can they find the evidence?

One thing that distinguishes it from other British series is that right from the start it assimilated visceral violence in a way that hadn't been seen before quite like it on British TV I think. This still makes me pause: for example in series 4 when the disturbing forensics guy is astride an unconscious DCI Huntley preparing to carve her up - I do have thoughts of "Is my life so barren and empty I need this kind of hard core shock for entertainment?". But at the same time I have to recognise that LOD does this well, mostly - and this is part of its appeal for me.

Tend to agree with Luna Schlosser here, and note that violence is surely not the same as autopsy?

In that scene it's surely relevant that the perp *doesn't* carve Huntley up, but is in fact killed by her - the shock is her waking up.

THE BRIDGE also has a recurring forensic / autopsy person who is proudly training Saga to examine dead bodies.

Tom D: are you saying that THE BILL used to have continuing storylines? I'd have thought that was rare and it was usually self-contained per episode. I did use to like this programme a lot!

Hamildan's post is good, and well-informed, though I don't remember there being no doubt re the crime in S4 - maybe there were multiple crimes?

It's true, as Hamildan says, that *procedure* is a bit part of the appeal, cf 'one rank senior' and even the sound of the tape starting.

I think CRACKER and subsequent McGovern work also missing from the PF list. Haven't watched it since it was broadcast, but my memory is it did a better job of teasing out the resonance of individual crimes/broader socio-political context than LoD?

Sorry I see the Groovypanda already noted this :)

Tom D: are you saying that THE BILL used to have continuing storylines? I'd have thought that was rare and it was usually self-contained per episode. I did use to like this programme a lot!

iirc it had, for instance, a long running storyline on a bad/bent cop and whether or not they'd get their comeuppance - in fact, I'm sure it did that more than once because soap opera fans love their baddies.

iirc it started out as self-contained episodes and the other thing that made it unique initially was that it didn't show the cops' private lives at all. But both of those principles were jettisoned in the chase for ratings.