Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) is a very worried man.
Not only has all hell broken out on his patch with an armed police convoy transporting a £10 million-pound heroin seizure for incineration hijacked, and three firearm officers dead, he also has what 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon would call ‘a home toilet situation’.
Aimlessly flicking at the useless flush handle at his concierge-serviced lodgings, he reflects on his earlier elation that the ‘H’ problem has been resolved. The recent demise of Assistant Chief Constable Derek Hilton (Paul Higgins) – widely assumed to be the bent-cop mastermind who was enabling a city crime syndicate (and last seen in Docklands, having apparently committed suicide by blowing off his head with a shotgun) – seemed to indicate that only the loose ends of the gang need tying off.
But life in the City with No Name is not as easy as that.
We hope you did your revision on series one-to-four on iPlayer, you lot at the back, now pay attention and stop live tweeting because there’s a lot going on here in the setup and as this is the most acronym-heavy police franchise on TV you’ve got to know your UCO (undercover officer) from your OCG (organised crime group) or you will get hopelessly lost.
Anyone who thought that Balaclava Man shot dead by Hastings at the end of the last series was a lone gunman is now disabused of that view. Indeed, there are hordes of them in different teams tootling around the country lanes – and one of them is a woman – bad girl Lisa MacQueen (Rochenda Sandall). She plays decoy in the ‘mum with a baby trapped in burning car’ ruse to stop the police convoy. The ‘baby’ is a doll and once this is discovered, MacQueen’s accomplices gun down the police officers.
She is obviously a ‘player’, but seems equivocal about administering the coup de grâce to severely injured policewoman DS Cafferty (Sian Reese-Williams, Emmerdale), hesitating despite orders from the gang leader to “finish her”.
“She’s a goner,” she lies.
Naturally, the fact that Cafferty is the only one left alive (apart from the civilian armoured lorry driver, who makes a run for it) sparks suspicion in the minds of AC-12 anti-corruption cops DS Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) and DS Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) that she is complicit in the heist. Protesting her innocence, Caffery says she believes that the woman might be a mother and didn’t want to make another child motherless – and she was the only parent on the convoy.
The whole debacle elicits a heartfelt “Mother of God” from Hastings, and it’s decided to work on the theory that the hijack had been carried out by a rival gang to the one from which the drug stash had been confiscated.
Which is bang on the money, as lead hijacker John Corbett, a poundshop Al Capone, plans to sell them back at an astronomical profit to the original ‘owner’, rival gang boss Slater (Barry Aird).
Corbett is played by big-name guest star Stephen Graham (the impish-faced but powerful actor who so memorably played the real Capone in Boardwalk Empire at the behest of Martin Scorsese, no less).
As Steve busily scans through the database of known female gang mugshots, Kate indulges in a cosy mum-chat over baby videos with desk-based PC Maneet Bindra (Maya Sondhi) in a ‘when this war is over I’m gonna marry my best girl’ dramatic cliché. Why not just dress Maneet in the red ensign’s shirt from Star Trek? This is an uncharacteristically clunky scene for Line Of Duty.
The police database throws up a betting shop robbery with a similar MO – a woman had diverted staff from a raid with a ‘baby’ that had stopped breathing. But CCTV footage of the raid has apparently been sequestered by DSU Alison Powell (Susan Vidler), who has been brought in from an outside force to help a critical undercover op. She has no intention of naming the ‘embedded asset’ to Hastings’ team. “AC-12 has stumbled on an undercover operation and now I’m asking you all to stumble away,” she tells a very miffed Ted.
If Cafferty wasn’t the leak then, our bloodhounds reason, the woman who let her live must be the officer working under cover. This all makes sense to Kate, who is an experienced UCO.
Maneet’s colleague PC Tatleen Sohota (Taj Atwall) tells Steve she has failed to flag up the disciplinary record of Vihan Malhotra (Maanuv Thiara), a civilian administrator at the facility organising the disposal of controlled substances. Unsurprising, really, as Malhotra is Maneet’s cousin. He doesn’t do his case any good when he flees from the interview room and has to be rugby tackled to the pavement by Steve in the street. And the cash found under his floorboards doesn’t help him either; he is held in custody for conspiracy to murder, having admitted that a woman had suborned him.
Steve and Kate look embarrassed and faintly flinch as in the interrogation room Maneet gets the full Rev Ian Paisley treatment from her erstwhile boss. Not only had she been suppressing Malhotra’s passing of info to a gang, she had also been downloading confidential files using PC Jamie Desford’s login to keep ACC Hilton in the loop. He, in turn, was asking her to spy on Hastings’ team. Well, what could she do? He outranked her.
Poor Maneet is lost from this point onwards. By trying to intercede with the gang on her cousin’s behalf by making an empty offer of police intelligence, she seals her fate, which has echoes of Jackie Laverty’s death in series one.
Declaring to his staff that he has finally got Hilton banged to rights, Hastings even offers to pay for celebratory drinks at the Red Lion. But Kate is unconvinced that Hilton is at the bottom of the conspiracy and tells Steve they must find the female UCO.
Meanwhile, after having lied about the surviving policewoman, Lisa is trying to get back into Corbett’s good books by setting up Slater so that the police, including Steve’s girlfriend Sam (Aiyesha Hart), catch him red-handed with the drug haul.
The bit now between his teeth, Hastings, with Kate and Steve in his wake, orders Powell to identify her UCO, who seems to have gone rogue by not reporting in for months. Relenting, Powell shows them DS John Corbett’s file.
OK, we knew it had to be him but the reveal is still a shock.
Steve’s back is still giving him jip since he was chucked into a stairwell at Nick Huntley’s legal chambers in the last series – although he’s made a miraculous recovery from a drop that would probably have seen him invalided out of the service, if not permanently disabled.
Still, he has so far got off lightly considering that series four’s police protagonist DCI Roz Huntley (Thandie Newton) had to have her septic hand removed, and tragically misunderstood DI Lindsay Denton (Keeley Hawes) was shot in the head as she tried to turn in DI ‘Dot’ Cottan, ‘The Caddy’, who had manipulated her when he orchestrated the murder of his former mentor, gangland leader Tommy Hunter.
Mostly deceased pawns in the conspiracy adorn the suspect board – Tony Gates and Jackie Laverty, Lindsay Denton, Danny Waldron, Dot, Hunter, DCI Mike Dryden (still alive), DS Jeremy Cole (who defenestrated poor Jessica Raine’s DC Georgia Trotman at hospital in S2), his partner DS Manish Prasad (alive) retired Chief Superintendent Patrick Fairbank and paedophile (also alive). Of the other suspects – Michael Hill, Susan Hyde Albert, Paul Haleton, Raymond Hall and Michelle Harris – we have little knowledge.
Was Adrian Dunbar’s turn in police uniform circling the PM’s limousine in the recent Red Nose Day parody of Bodyguard meant to throw us off the scent? If so, it hasn’t entirely done the trick.
In series four Maneet appeared to be working for Hilton as an inside woman in AC-12. She did download Dot Cottan’s dying declaration using Desford’s log-in information and gave the video to Hilton, which led to Hastings being given a regulation 15 notice for being ‘H’. But we know he’s broke and facing an expensive divorce, so if he is ‘Mr Big’, where is the money?
Deborah Shrewsbury
@shrewdkitty
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