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

assistant chief constable hilton: can't decide if he's implausible or just super-annoying

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7hXF2bXwAAhClv.jpg

"superintendant, your tone is oppressive"
"she's an sio 20 yrs on the squad, if she can't take it god help us all"

important exchange, will write up shortly, when ep is over

"masons are the mafia of the mediocre" !!!

the topic i was going to write up has now very much entered the building

i have decided balacalavaman is hilton bcz i hate him

I don't think Huntley spurned him because she loves her husband. I think she did it so that AC12 would have as little dirt as possible on her. Also because (apart from the killing and whatnot), she's basically a total pro. She does everything by the book and she got held back when she had her family. Which is why she resents the crap out of her family, and why she was willing to frame an innocent man - because this is her chance to get to the top of the heap she should have got to ten years ago.

Could easily be Hilton. That bugger will do anything to stop Stone Cold Steve Arnott.

ok so this is no longer going to strike readers as percipient after that hastings-huntley confrontation but what i was going to suggest was that this series is a kind of counter-prime-suspect (or possibly playing with this idea)

a) throughout s4, there's been a LOT of girl-on-girl exchange of glances re (actual instances of) sexism, inc.hastings's "darling" but also just a general sideye-the-masons-and-the-mcps exasperation
b) i think the series is taking the line -- maybe for reasons of good drama, maybe for more "old fashioned" reasons -- that Political Correctness is anathema to Good Coppering etc etc
c) of the corrupt policeman to be taken down, so far TWO have been black* -- adding just this ep jamie desford (not very good at his job) and maneet (gender-loyal to huntley?) as weak reed
d) denton! (tho denton is actually the zombie jane tennison of this entire franchise: viz i think LoD's long game is subtle and playfully complex and ambiguous, rather than merely revanchist BLM-is-the-real-racism)
e) hastings! he may be a sticky old paisleyite old-skool bastard but he is a good copper and an honest man, therefore sticky old paisleyite old-skool bastardry = good coppering
f) hilton! the weak liberal is the worst sexist perve of all (also clearly balaclavaman, since there are no villains in this franchise who are not actually policemen or onside-woth-policemen)
g) kate is the xander

*drama-wise this is excellent news, of course, it gives black actors access to complex, meaty memorable roles

(rewatched the original prime suspect a week or three back: "you're being bing-bonged all over the station" is still the standout u-go-girl moment of exasperated female solidarity in that groundbreaking series, "mafia of mediocrity" is a perfect description of nearly all jane tennison's (male) senior officers BUT ALSO HER TOTAL WEAK-REED HUSBAND WHICH WHY DID SHE EVER MARRY THIS DISLOYAL LUMP????)

^^anyway the makers of LoD s4 were also imo rewatching prime suspect a lot, to look for stuff they could repurpose and play with 20 years later

I also think Huntley spurned Hilton because icky arm would be a bit tricky to hide when naked.

also surely bcz ICKY HILTON NAKED* (plus she knew she would have to kill him unobserved which might be tricky right now)

*she may be a piece of work but she has standards (even if low-bar nick h suggests otherwise)

I wonder was Maneet turned towards helping Hilton & Huntley discredit AC-12 because she feels guilty about helping Dot last year (also surely that's the mother of all charges to bring up against AC-12 when trying to discredit them rather than "Ted's a bit of a dinosaur"?)

that will an excellent turning of tables in s5

hastings: so what do you have to say to that, evil copper of s5?
ecos5: er um oh uh
hastings: so i put it to you that YOU are the evil one here
ecos5: ALL COPPERS ARE BASTARDS, had you thought of that?
hastings: er um oh uh
ecos5: hence AC-12 is WORST OF ALL, so i put it to you that YOU are the evil one here ted so-called hastings

xpost - lol great point re: dot

Also, yes, Neil from The Office is a good call - he's pretty much the perfect dramatically satisfying "hidden in plain sight" candidate - and he's the only other one who knew about arnott's visit last week. Maybe his office is above th husbands - they're both lawyers? That would explain how quickly he turned up.

Anyway this ep was a bit of a rehash of earlier "Denton turns the tables" scenes but very well done. What's letting the side down this season are Hilton and the husband (both pretty crap actors)

Not sure the shows is taking a "political correctness is an anethema to good coppering" line, if only because Hastings and Arnott's screwups generally make things worse for their cases.

i refer m'lud to the "oppressive" exchange

but i agree we can't yet tell if it's taking this line or pretending to flirt with it to set up a future table-turning (feel that arnott has been tossed down one of the more slithery snakes this series; hastings still hanging on in there)

firms in the building (as established last week)

top was some bank (couldn't read name)
below that VACANT FOR DEVELOPMENT (floor nick h's office is now on)
below that MCALEER BROS CONSTRUCTION
below that WEBBER AND BARCLAY (nick h works for them) (but maybe jimmy lakewell also does, tho why wd he then run out into the street)

(floors anyone's guess tbh, but this is what was displayed as arnott read it)

Have to assume from past precedent that somebody is already working with or against somebody in a way that we aren't privy to - e.g. Hastings leaking info via Maneet (why? dunno), Hilton working to back at Roz for manipulating him, etc etc

Have a feeling she may get away with it in the end - mostly just for a bit of variety in the context of previous series. We will definitely get a flashback to Tim Ifield's flat at some point, it will be interesting to see who else might have turned up to help out (Jodie? Jimmy Lakewell?).

http://i4.birminghammail.co.uk/incoming/article8934666.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/Neil-Morrissey.jpg

One option, perhaps, that Huntley got the right person to begin with, and all this palaver has been pointless.

Only Neil Morrissey knows.

I've never seen S1. Is there anything from it I need to know to make sense of S4? e.g. the detective that was brought in to take over who recognised Kate from before - is he from S1?

don't think so, no: if the dot cottan story is going to be rehashed in rhuntley's war on ac12 then it begins in s1 (but doesn't have much play, beyond hints he's a wrong un)

model for LoD's wtf-omg moments was set in s1, but in a sense nothing you didn't see again in s2/s3

I watched S2 first, without knowing for sure that Dot was a baddie, and it worked pretty well.

Yeah, the guy who was brought in who recognised Kate was in S1, he took over an from someone being investigated by AC-12 then too. Don't know that it's overarching so much as it was just a nod to the past and explained how he knew who Kate was.

Though perhaps he's the key to ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING.

I laugh every time someone says "DI Buckles". It's such a perfect stupid name.

yes i think they just wanted to box off the "surely someone will recognise kate" idea so that it was a known (and foolish) quantity who did: lampshade hanging basically

if buckles is balaclavaman i will eat neil morrissey's cane

Hilton was in S1 too iirc

yes he has been a continuum of annoying quasi-liberal uselessness (but i don't think you learn anything abt him that you haven't found out in s4 alone

"listen ironside"

lakewell continues to be a needless dick, generally a sign you'll go down hard in the moral universe of the procedural

ok lol LoD DOES NOT DISAPPOINT

ok -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- there has been some stuff in this ep which goes back to s1 (baseball bats and the killing of jackie laverty)

indie-girl w/crush on roz is a menace imho

hmm...not a huge fan of a return to the evil police conspiracy theme, though there's no evidence yet that it is has anything to do with anything ("in both cases the criminals wore balaclavas and disposed of body parts in freezers - can't be a coincidence!")

and if Jamie can't make the connection to go "btw I gave my password to Maneet the other day" he's probably in the wrong job

hmm...not a huge fan of a return to the evil police conspiracy theme, though there's no evidence yet that it is has anything to do with anything ("in both cases the criminals wore balaclavas and disposed of body parts in freezers - can't be a coincidence!")

― Choco Blavatsky (seandalai), Sunday, April 23, 2017 10:33 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd say there's not a snowball's chance in hell those references wouldn't have come up again unless they had some major significance. The fact Hilton is seemingly trying to get AC12 shut down so they can't investigate his connection to Dot and whatever involvement he had with the Laverty case is surely significance enough.

Like it or not, the wider corruption storyline has been the backbone of the previous three series and it's not likely to go away at this point. It's always been about the bigger picture, with individual cases just a small part of it.

Jamie is bit of a weird character, so bizarrely incompetent it did make wonder if there was something else behind it. Or was that whole plot thread just there to turn the screws on Hastings even further?

re jamie see part (c) of my counter-prime-suspect reading further up

i hope it's a smart and interesting version of this rather than crappy anti-PC edginess :|

Admiring Roz's ability to measure out the correct number of pills while chugging that bottle like a freshman's first jagermesister shot

Always find it oddly disconcerting that, as far as I can tell, nobody in this series has ever said 'London' or 'Metropolitan Police'. Is it set in some parallel universe?

I don't think the name of the town is ever mentioned

If Hastings turns out to be corrupt I'm going to be absolutely gutted

p sure it's not set in hastings

:D

rewatching: faintly hoping everything is not resolved next ep, and that s5 features beloved characters good and bad variously returning wheelchair bound, one armed, metal claw for hands, peg leg, eyepatch and so on

I like the sound of that

Always find it oddly disconcerting that, as far as I can tell, nobody in this series has ever said 'London' or 'Metropolitan Police'. Is it set in some parallel universe?

isn't set somewhere nameless in the east midlands?

isn't it, rather

Aren't the force called Central Police or Midlandshire Police or something?

WIKIPEDIA SEZ that there are various on-set clues -- maps and such -- that it's birmingham (and series one was filmed there; since then it;s mostly been filmed in belfast)

nearly no one involved speaks in birmingham tho (the accent mix seems designed to be a metropolitcan mix, which is maybe why london seems a good first approx)

hastings speaks in norn irn obv

I think the city is located somewhere along the Belfast-Birmingham corridor

Reminds me of how US and Canadian shows are shot in Toronto but it's never "Toronto"

Kate was undercover as an officer FROM the midlands, so it can't be there