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

Bit underwhelming. It feels like there was a romance plot between Kate and Jo that got subtracted somewhere in the script stage. Looking back it’s like... what actually happened? Did we learn anything we didn’t know before? Apart from the fact we probably won’t be seeing James Nesbitt any time soon?

Loved the Hastings Raised Eyebrow of Respect when Jo started quoting law regulations

Finding a flyblown corpse in this show doesn't quite convince me Thurwell's definitely dead xp

He's clearly not dead.

I'm not 100% clear on why Kate ran. Was she not supposed to have a weapon?

Bit underwhelming. It feels like there was a romance plot between Kate and Jo that got subtracted somewhere in the script stage. Looking back it’s like... what actually happened? Did we learn anything we didn’t know before? Apart from the fact we probably won’t be seeing James Nesbitt any time soon?

Initially I thought they were going off to do some in-real-time DETECTING which would be impossible if they were gummed up with explaining how they killed Ryan. Kate's reluctance to give up her gun would suggest she thought she was in imminent danger of being shot by bent coppers?

It seems weird that the series would be extended to seven episodes and then spend this whole episode on not really moving things forward materially - unless the point was to slow everything down and make it feel as though they're going to run out of time. (xp with gyac, exactly).

I appreciated a long interrogation scene, it’s clearly been done to ratchet up the tension between Carmichael and the rest of the gang even more, Ted seemed like a man with increasingly little tolerance left so interested to see where that goes for the finale. Ofc his police pension is at risk but he’s never shied away from doing the right thing even if it would cost him personally.

you just know she had the time of her life with these lines. the crew must have been howling after each take, egging her on

it was worth watching just for "Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey" alone!

that was a blatant crowd-pleaser but still...

If ‘as per my last email’ was a person #LineofDuty pic.twitter.com/Kyq1gW3Tid

— Becca 💐 (@Beccaakeen) April 25, 2021

what an exceptional villain she is though, her every facial expression is full of haughty contempt and pure hatred - almost a perfect politician.

gonna tell my grandkids she was Rachel Reeves

So what do we reckon they'll find beneath the floor of the printing shop?

It was the gun workshop, wasn’t it? Fuck knows but Jackie Laverty has to be a possibility.

Funny that Carmichael didn’t even flinch when Ted basically accused the chief constable of being H.

The other possibility is that she thinks he’s gone cuckoo over this multi-tentacled conspiracy theory, like pretty much everyone else, so nothing surprises her.

Yeah, either she is bent AF or she is convinced that Ted has lost it completely and is just trying to hold things together until she can run out the clock on him. I absolutely love how she cuts through his blustering by getting quieter and crisper instead of getting louder herself. She is factory-designed to drive Ted nuts.

We did at least learn this week that Jo is fundamentally not bent, even though she is in league with the OCG. We also learned that it's not neighbours who keep giving all this valuable forensic evidence, but the national ballistics intelligence service, Trish, you absolute fool.

Disappointingly flat end to the Ryan arc, his stint as a bent copper barely amounted to anything did it?

I also would like to call bullshit on the Spanish cops immediately identifying Jimmy Bloodlands from a decomposed corpse, that's a matter for forensics to determine, surely.

I was hoping we'd get an entire episode devoted to Kate and Jo on the run, was just starting to think "Ooh, this could get interesting" and then they just gave up. Meh.

Did anyone spot the blatantly misleading blurb on BBC Iplayer - "AC-12 struggle to come to terms with tragic events"? Yes, everyone was right cut-up over Ryan I can tell you.

Ted being forced into early retirement is pretty tragic

The ratings for this thing surely demand a seventh series

#LineOfDuty reached its highest ever overnight audience of 11 million for the penultimate episode of series six on @BBCOne, with a 51.7% audience share.

Don't miss the finale this Sunday at 9pm and watch the series so far on @BBCiPlayer: https://t.co/n6PGOM8WFP pic.twitter.com/luO7OdXFWX

— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) April 26, 2021

Disappointingly flat end to the Ryan arc, his stint as a bent copper barely amounted to anything did it?

Yeah this was sort of a shame. He's such a little toad it would've been good (but I guess impossible) to keep him as a character for a bit longer.

It was a bit of a weird ep, wasn't it? Good to get a lot of things confirmed (even if they made no sense, e.g. Why would Davidson arrange a phony betting shop holdup when she'd also arranged the wrong surveillance and it'd already been delayed from the night before??).
Guessing Thurwell was the 'dad' figure. Hope those prison guards don't get to her.

those prison guards make me laugh. like they’ve literally been running OCG ordered kickings with maximum sadism for some time now. just wandering around the prison fucking up rats or potential rats. happy as larks.

Perhaps the people most happy in their line of work, y/n?

definately

"oopsy daisy.. it's like a maze in here"

lol loved it.

Finding a flyblown corpse in this show doesn't quite convince me Thurwell's definitely dead xp

― groovypanda, Monday, April 26, 2021 12:45 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

He's clearly not dead.

this would be jeddy mercury's biggest red-herring yet. james nesbitt's appearance consisting of 2 photographs

also i spent most of last night thinking this was the last episode so was saying to myself:
“they’ve left themselves a lot to fit in 45 minutes”
“they’ve left themselves a lot to fit in 30 minutes”
“…. 15 minutes”
“…. 10 minutes”

etc a lot

i thought it was a bit of a weird episode, a lot of stuff not really working for me. also felt like the plot wasn't moved along as much as you might have expected for the penultimate episode.

I really love the interrogation scenes the most - so it was a good ep for me. But I don't get too heavily into all the daft plotting I more vibe off the ambience and tension in scenes like this.

Huh, I thought it was super fun and tense episode, probably my favourite of the season so far.

Not sure why Kate ran though, apart from generally being a bit of a chump.

So now all three leads have done something significant enough to get them fired?

the kate running and thinking steve and the gaffer had set her up i found very weird, also her almost getting herself shot. just didn't quite work for me.

the interview was a good scene but didn't reveal much. no comment

it revealed that ted says it "you've got another thing coming"

Yeah, definately the sort of thing he would do. Wrong 'un.

noticed that too. v careful to say it that way.

i thought the interview scene was fantastic tbh. three way dynamic.

they're always the best bits and it was about time we had a full-on stonewalling from someone

i find carmichaels hard to watch -- or actually to listen to: anna maxwell martin mumbles or flubs a lot of her words in a way i find really aggravating

i'm also enjoying CI osborne's increasingly demented pronouncements to press cameras

We haven't seen any big reverses in the interview room, which I now realise I've grown to really anticipate with this show, and I miss them. You could usually count on at least one interview where you're deliciously (or nervously) anticipating the complete logistical beatdown of baddy (x) (or unfairly maligned goodie (y)) when halfway through the interview they throw down some jaw-dropping new piece of info that suddenly has the interrogators squirming. Lindsey Denton was a master of this iirc.

the kate running and thinking steve and the gaffer had set her up i found very weird

She said somebody had set them up, but I don't remember her specifically pinning it on Steve and the gaffer? But yeah, running off with Jo really didn't make sense to me. She's had a blind spot for Jo the whole time which might have been explained by Feelings but the show hasn't gone down that road, despite the meetings in cafes, the hand holdings, the "is it personal?" etc. "I'll show you that you can trust me! Let me hold the trigger of your gun while you are also holding it!" was a bit of a mad move and also quite.... hott?? Like I said above, it almost feels like there was supposed to be a romance but it got excised.

Lotta shoes to drop:
- Steve's drugs test
- Steve's transfer
- The gaffer's 50K
- The gaffer's future with AC-12
- What's under the floor
- Is Thurwell really dead?
- And of course... Who ordered the murder of Gail Vella and why?

Also where does Steph fit into it all? Would expect it to come back to her but... can't see it being that interesting?

Poerr Steph. Yeah who knows. Frankly even Jo might not make much of an appearance after this - even if she stays alive in Cell Block H. They've wrung what they can out of her, it seems.

this would be jeddy mercury's biggest red-herring yet. james nesbitt's appearance consisting of 2 photographs

Ha yeah, this would be hilarious. Bung Jimmy Nesbitt a few hundred quid just to use a few pics.

i also found that war room bit a bit weird, a spaniard cop with a go-pro streaming a raid to AC-12 just seemed a bit odd

"I'll show you that you can trust me! Let me hold the trigger of your gun while you are also holding it!" was a bit of a mad move and also quite.... hott??

it was, but this was to get jo’s fingerprints on the gun, right?

Oh my god. How many other things have I missed here?!

We also learned that it's not neighbours who keep giving all this valuable forensic evidence, but the national ballistics intelligence service, Trish, you absolute fool.

Thanks for figuring this out for me! Still not sure why NBIS would get pronounced that way.

Nice little scenic tour they took in Steve's car. 'On the left you will see where Gail Vella got murdered. On the right the secret OCG HQ.'

Oh my god. How many other things have I missed here?!

Heavy foreshadowing at the end, CI Osborne intoning "I will personally see to it that those enemies within are made to suffer the consequences" as the prison door closes on Jo. Of course that's what they want you to think.

Let me hold the trigger of your gun while you are also holding it!" was a bit of a mad move and also quite.... hott??

I thought that part was skating on very thin ice in possible use stereotypical portrayal of repressed female lesbian longings and plotwise tbh