Line of Duty (BBC)

[GwiDan]

16 hours ago, jonamok said:

My spoilery S6 Line of Duty joke:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

How do you know that the fourth man is going to implicate his boss?

 

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Because Ian Buckells.

 

 

No comment. 

[Fierce Poodle]

19 hours ago, jonamok said:

My spoilery S6 Line of Duty joke:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

How do you know that the fourth man is going to implicate his boss?

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Because Ian Buckells.

 

 

Even Jed Mercurio would have been too embarrassed to write that.

[Vimster]

The conspiracy is spreading to other shows now

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Hanzo the Razor]

Bloody hell but Series 5 took a sharp nosedive in quality. It's become self parody by this point. The last couple of episodes were like a cross between Agetha Christie and Scooby Doo! I don't actually give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut who H is. I don't care. I would just like some semblance of reality back. I'll watch Series 6 but my expectations are currently lower than a no legged ants arse.

[Fierce Poodle]

Season 6 is better overall but the ending was pure camel jizz.

[McCoy]

Spoilers for Season 1-6 below. 

Spoiler

So we've binged the entire series over the last month or so and have really enjoyed. Frankly surprised the BBC is still capable of making something this good. 

 

Binging the whole thing definitely helps with the call backs but probably also causes some issues as Season 5 is an obvious drop off from the first four seasons (2-4 being the highlights) and Season 6 is hampered by the issues of Season 5 and burdened by the increasingly weighty mythology of the show which probably should have been binned off after finishing Dot's storyline. 

 

Season 5's main problem is the character assassination of Hastings really. They went to show much trouble to present him as a bad guy but they went so far they were never able to logically unwind it all. Wiping a laptop for looking at some legal porn? In the middle of an important operation whilst you've turned your phone off? Receiving a bundle of documents relating to an incident that wiped out your life savings and not bothering to open the package? Then when you do open the package and it contains £100,000 not immediately alerting your team and checking the history of the bank notes? Hiding half of the £100,000 somewhere that a forensic evidence team cannot locate it? Inform the criminal gang that they have a informant whilst an active police officer is embedded. The rest of it can all be hand waved away as camera angles, editing but those story points did happen and are completely not consistent with Hastings previously and don't wash with the subsequent attempts to hand wave them away. 

 

Season 6 was better but still suffered from the lingering issues of Season 5 and running the H plot into the ground but still leaving the door ajar to explore it further in the future. 

 

Turning Buckells into H, but not really into H didn't really wash either. We'd seen the guy behind the computer be taken serious by the criminal gangs, seemingly in control of entire operations and deciding who lives and who dies. Then it becomes Buckells who is just doing it for a bit of cash. He's seemingly competent enough to arrange the murder of former colleagues in Spain but not to stop an active asset from framing him. He can arrange the murder of a prisoner being transported but not manage to jump prison himself. 

 

Season 6 just seemed to throw a lot at the wall and then backed away from it. Kate and Jo 'relationship'. Arnett's drug problem and back pain. Both seemingly set up to be more interesting than the eventual conclusions, or lack thereof, were. And why did Kate decide to go on the run after lawfully killing a gang member who had set up a trap to kill her. 

 

The obvious answer is that there is someone else above Buckells but it really is a storyline that they should drop because it gets increasingly ridiculous. I don't really think the show is helped by this massive multi season conspiracy, just go back to season arcs of slightly dodgy coppers doing slightly dodgy things. Not get so involved in a conspiracy element that every single character has plenty of shots of them looking shifty so the audience can try to guess who the bad guy is. Each season has had a decent storyline (perhaps less so 5 and 6 which really lent into the H storyline too much) but they actually lose something trying to be retrofitted to serve the overall plot and the constant call back and appearances of certain characters (Jill) just makes the show's world seem quite small.

 

[mushashi]

But that was the entire USP of Line of Duty! 😻

 

Without the metastory which tied all the series together, it would just have been a bunch of random seemingly bent coppers being investigated every year (which would have been fine but I doubt that would have catapulted the series to such popularity), Jed Mercurio always tied it back to the illuminati, until he decided he couldn't actually tie it back to the illuminati and fucked up the landing instead.

 

The advertising for the final episode even ran with the big reveal as the reason to tune in live.