REVIEW: Line Of Duty (S5 E3/6)

Has Operation Peartree gone pear-shaped? With undercover officer John Corbett making a success of ringing rings around the cops, corrupt officer ‘H’ may be even further embedded than we thought – clearly it wasn’t the deceased ACC Hilton.

Last week’s highly dramatic conclusion, implying that someone in AC-12 may have recruited corrupt officer Cafferty, turns out to be a bust – Cafferty identifies ‘Dot’ Cottan, who died in the last series. So that gets us precisely nowhere – but is Hastings’ relief more than incidental? His money worries are getting him into dangerous waters with his clearly dodgy ex-cop financial advisor Moffatt (Patrick Fitzsymons).

Corbett’s plan to raid the Eastfield evidence storage depot, with the aim of driving out of cover the next link in the chain of corruption forged by Lisa McQueen, seems destined to go wrong. But whoever ‘H’ is – just an anonymous contact on the end of a terminal – he (or she) can’t spell ‘Definately’. Is this a clue?

Corbett gives Arnott a burner phone number with which to track Lisa – who we’re still half certain is actually undercover herself. A contact of hers is Mincowicz (Tomi May), who tortured Arnott back during the investigation into DCI Tony Gates in series one.

Arnott’s not best pleased when Hastings resolves to raid the print shop Corbett’s using, and a block of flats used for prostitution – it’s too early for his liking, and he tips Corbett off. Big mistake Steve, that could be the end of your career. But Ted’s happy that AC-12 is now ‘sucking diesel’.

While the raids free some sex-slaves and capture some passport forgers, Corbett’s crime gang is well away, and he confronts Arnott with the suspicion that Hastings may be covering his own tracks. The big Eastfield raid is still on, though, and Corbett hopes to capture both the gang and ‘H’.

Gill Bigelow is putting the squeeze on Ted, but not in the way he’d prefer – is she pushing to stop Corbett because she’s on H’s payroll?

Steve finally confides in Kate that he’s working with Corbett, and of course Kate is not pleased at being kept in the dark – though she realises that if Corbett’s old boss Powell, or Hastings, is corrupt, then Steve had his reasons. But the planned Eastfield raid has put an end to the possibility of secrecy.

Hastings is in a panic about something after Steve and Kate fill him in – why is he disposing of his laptop?

When the raid goes down, a diversion draws the armed police away from the depot, then ‘H’ turns up and disables the trackers on the stolen goods. But seeing him about to escape, Corbett shoots ‘H’, and the gang escapes with a huge haul.

‘H’ is unmasked as DCS Hargreaves of Serious and Organised Crime (Tony Pitts), who we have previously seen in series two and four and has always been a bit on the dodgy side – he was always on the list of suspects for being ‘H’. Was he too obvious a choice for being ‘H’? We do wonder if this is the case.

While this gives Steve a great excuse for not calling on-off girlfriend Sam Railston (Aiysha Hart), who is in Hargreaves’ department, it doesn’t answer the question of who told H about the tracking devices.

Corbett confronts Arnott and claims he didn’t mean to kill Hargreaves – we had wondered why he didn’t just shoot to wound. But he’s now even more determined that the real H is Hastings.

Ted, meanwhile, is out on the town with sultry and ambiguous Gill Bigelow, little knowing that Corbett is after Mrs Ted – how will he react when he gets the call from the increasingly unhinged Corbett? What’s interesting here is that Bigelow, despite her obvious attraction to Ted, is messing with his mind, gently implying Ted should take early retirement. Make no mistake: with the cop-turned-property-developer making him an offer he may not be able to refuse (do you think this guy is bent too, or is at least more than he seems?), Bigelow on his case (in more ways than one), the mystery laptop and pressure to solve the case intense, it’s safe to say that Ted is all over the shop and definitely not sucking diesel. And he’s not completely out of the woods yet when it comes to the identity of ‘H’.

So will Hargreaves’ DNA turn up in the brothel, or was someone else Lisa’s mysterious visitor? And just what was on Ted Hastings’ laptop other than kitten videos? There’s a long way to go yet, and Corbett might yet do more damage before he’s brought to heel.

As ever, you just can’t take your eyes off this series – it’s still providing rollercoaster-style thrill and spills, and keeping us on our toes and guessing.

We’re half-way through the series, and Jed Mercurio is famous for not following the rules and producing breathtaking twists. We really have no idea where this is going.

Chris Jenkins

TO READ OUR OF EPISODE ONE REVIEW CLICK HERE

TO READ OUR REVIEW OF EPISODE TWO CLICK HERE

REVIEW: Line Of Duty (S5 E2/6)

Remember those Police Memorial Trust plaques the late Michael Winner campaigned for to commemorate officers who died heroically in the line of duty? Well, we’re thinking of starting a crusade for one to honour poor PC Maneet Bindra (Maya Sondhi).

Far from being a bad apple, Maneet was a warrior to the end – murdered for trying to infiltrate the organised crime gang that had co-opted her cousin Malhotra to facilitate last week’s police convoy hijack.

Writer Jed Mercurio is a master of misdirection, so when the gang abducted her and found she had been recording their conversations using a device in the burner phone they’d given her we were supposed to think she’d been bugged either by the gang or AC-12. But no, the total star had done it of her own volition to feed intelligence back to ‘Doubting Thomas’ Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) as proof of her professional integrity.

 At least DS Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) and DS Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) had the compassion to look ashamed and distraught when they identified her corpse at the same dockside where Assistant Chief Constable Derek Hilton’s body had been discovered in the last series. Although neither of them gives Maneet the benefit of the doubt because of her complicity with Hilton, the location of her murder in itself must sow significant doubts that he killed himself.

 Hastings only makes a cursory speech to his troops about Maneet’s death – totally failing to admit that he’d been wrong in his assessment of her as just another bent cop. She deserved a better eulogy that that, Ted.

 Inevitably, in these days of social media, a bystander has supplied smartphone footage of Maneet’s abduction in the street.

 Reporting in to police HQ to Deputy Chief Constable Wise (Elizabeth Rider), Hastings meets (elected) Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Rohan Sindwhani (Ace Bhatti), who says he’s been brought in to “shake things up” in the face of public concern about the extent of police corruption in the City With No Name. “Absolutely,” says Hastings through gritted teeth – we know how he just loves civilians poking their noses in.

 He’s even more gobsmacked when his former crush, lawyer Gill Biggeloe (Polly Walker), walks in. She, you may remember from series three, was called in to serve as legal counsel for AC-12 after the mishandling of the Lindsay Denton case (Steve had slept with Denton just as she was charged with helping to set up the attack on a police convoy in which gang leader Tommy Hunter and witness protection officer DS Jayne Akers and other police officers died).

 Gill and Ted had a brief flirtation, but he had an attack of Catholic guilt and rebuffed her advances and tried to effect a rapprochement with estranged wife Roisin (Andrea Irvine).

 But the meeting isn’t a total loss. Having had his nose put out of joint by DSU Alison Powell (Susan Vidler) last week, he asks to sequester all files for Operation Partridge – sorry – Peartree (is there an in-joke there or is it just supposed to sound like Yewtree?) and information on undercover officer/gang leader John Corbett – as his identity as forger John Clayton.

 Maneet’s abductor is identified as Lee Banks (Alistair Natkiel), formerly best buds with ‘Balaclava Man’ Robert Denmore – shot dead by with unseemly haste by Hastings in AC-12’s lobby at the end of series 4. Denmore was instrumental in running interference in DCI Roz Huntley’s Operation Trapdoor.

 So if Corbett, formerly an anti-corruption cop, has gone rogue, why? Well, as with such lies and obfuscations, the wife is usually the last one to know. So when Steve and Kate question Steph Corbett (Amy de Bhrun), she gives the impression that he’s a faithless husband who has left her and their two children to fend for themselves. This hits too close to home for Kate, the former UCO who frets about her less than stellar record as a wife and mum. This is reinforced by a heartwarming family tableau when Steve drops her home. Oh Kate, don’t forget what happened to Maneet.

 Steve follows Maneet’s recorded directions to the gang’s Phone box of Doom, where a kid on a bike films him. This footage is passed to Corbett, who asks whether Steve is a bent cop. “As far as I can remember, he couldn’t be straighter,” says a lackey. One can almost hear the cogs moving in Corbett’s brain as he orders his henchwoman Lisa (Rochenda Sandall) to take a bribe to surviving cop DS Cafferty (Sian Reese-Williams), now recuperating from her shooting at home under police guard, and drop hints about what might happen to her family if she doesn’t keep quiet.

 When Corbett’s gang pulls a night-time ambush on another police convoy taking a cache of semi-automatic weapons from a ballistics lab to be destroyed, Steve’s ex, Sam (Aiyesha Hart), is first on the scene. Why does she say there were no casualties when there patently must have been? Steve doesn’t push the point – too caught up in the romance of the moment. There’s none so blind…

 Steph, we learn, has been less than truthful about her relationship with Corbett; the doting husband and dad is still in touch – and phones wanting to hear his daughter sleeping. Well, it might mean nothing; after all, the Kray twins were sentimental about their old mum.

 Corbett’s erstwhile partner in Operation Peartree, DC Cameron (Jasmin M Stewart) says he believed he was on to the top man ‘H”, and was intent on climbing the gang’s hierarchy. And indeed, he is in contact with the conspiracy’s boss on the web, who is keen to know what Corbett is planning. “Something that could be bigger than Brink‘s-Mat,” he boasts.

Corbett has also been doing his homework on ‘straight arrow’ Steve. And when he jumps Steve in a car park and shackles him in the backseat of his own car, he explains that they have the same aim – to establish links between the OCG and high-level police officers. His recent stunts, he claims, have been to attract attention of the top guy.

He begs Steve to join him in taking down the gang because Powell only wants him to go after the ‘small fry’ rather than the ‘big fish’. Cafferty and her cohorts had been bent, he says.

“If I come in, they’ll charge me or pension me off before I get a chance to crack the case,” he tells Steve. “The people who don’t the truth coming out – they give you a job and the first thing they do is cut your balls off.” He means Powell and Hastings. 

To show Steve his good faith he later dobs in Lee Banks to armed police during a visit to Cafferty’s house. But Lisa is now wondering about Corbett’s motives in willy-waving to the capo di tutti capi.

Hastings, meanwhile, is getting more agitated by the day. He begs Roisin to come back, holding out hope of recouping the money from his failed property investment in Belfast. This offer has been made by the (now retired) police union rep who represented Huntley during the investigation into the killing of Tim Ifield, the civilian forensic coordinator in series 4. So, nothing odd there then, eh?

Roisin, however, is in a new relationship. How will this affect Hastings’ moral compass, or is he already lost, as Corbett maintains.

He gets even more jumpy when Cafferty is questioned by Steve and Kate in the interrogation room about her bent colleagues in the drugs ambush. Whose mugshot has she identified as their recruiter – is it a cop? It’s hidden from Hastings by frosted glass as he paces nervously about his office.

Somehow, Mercurio is still leading us all up the garden path. But how many other characters will be caught in the crossfire in the remaining four episodes? Still no one is above suspicion in this Western-style morality tale.

Deborah Shrewsbury 

TO READ OUR EPISODE ONE REVIEW CLICK HERE

Line Of Duty: Ted Hastings origin series in the pipeline

One of the best crime drama characters this country has produced in the past decade, Superintendent Ted Hastings is beloved by fans across the UK for his steadfastness in his approach to bringing down bent coppers.

The Killing Times has learned that Line Of Duty showrunner and creator, Jed Mercurio, is set to make a Ted Hastings origin series called Mother Of God, which is set to focus on his formative years in the Northern Irish police force in the early 1980s. The series will also focus on his first case, where a gang in Belfast abducts innocent people and makes them suck diesel.

The series will see young Ted go through police college, where we’ll see him train for the ‘swearing with intent’ module, learn how to use the words ‘fella’ and ‘son’ with feeling, and how to sniff out bent coppers from 100 paces. It’s also expected that the origin series will feature Ted’s relationship with new wife Roisin and footage of the pair enjoying Sunday trips to Pirates Adventure Golf in Dundonald.

Made by AprilFirst Productions, Mother Of God is expected to hit our screens in the distant future.

UPDATE: We reached out to Superintendent Hastings for comment, but he was unavailable due to floating up the Lagan on a bubble.

FOR ALL OUR LINE OF DUTY NEWS AND REVIEWS CLICK HERE 

REVIEW: Line Of Duty (S5 E1/6)

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

FOR ALL OUR LINE OF DUTY NEWS AND REVIEWS CLICK HERE

RATED: The best Line Of Duty series

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Line Of Duty series five transmission date confirmed by BBC One

We know that AC-12 is waiting in the wings to take on the Balaclava Man and root out the mysterious ‘H’, and we had a date pencilled in our diaries for the return of Line Of Duty.

Now, after the launch night in London, that date is now confirmed.

Here it is!

The fans have already called it. Confirming for the record, #LineOfDuty Series 5 starts on Sunday 31st March on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.@Vicky_McClure @martin_compston @StephenGraham73 @Jed_Mercurio @RochendaSandall pic.twitter.com/oNpYNfQ0nU

— BBC One (@BBCOne) March 18, 2019

FOR ALL OUR LINE OF DUTY NEWS AND REVIEWS CLICK HERE

BBC releases first Line Of Duty trailer

Not long now, it really isn’t.

We’re a few weeks away from series five of Line Of Duty – now one of the most-watched crime dramas in Britain – and anticipation is feverpitch.

We still haven’t had the official synopsis yet, but what we do have is a brand, new, shiny trailer, where we get to see Stephen Graham’s Balaclava Man in action for the first time.

Here it is…

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BBC releases first images from series five of Line Of Duty

One of British crime dramas biggest hits from the last decade – Line Of Duty – is ominously waiting in the wings. After the show went stratospheric in series four thank to a transfer to BBC One primetime, it has become one of the most eagerly anticipated and talked about dramas (of any genre) in the UK.

In the lead-up to series five (which is just around the corner), the BBC has released some first-look images, including a group shot that the Radio Times has described as the first to feature all of the new series’ villains.

So here we go…

The first image features the trusty team of AC12, while image two Stephen Graham and his gang of ne’er-do-wells. We know that Graham is to play the Balaclava Man (real name, John Corbett), while standing next to him is Lisa McQueen (played by Rochenda Sandall), both members of the organised crime group that has been plaguing AC12 for all these years.

But who are they in cahoots with? And who is H?

Not long to find out.

FOR ALL OUR NEWS AND REVIEWS OF LINE OF DUTY CLICK HERE

 

BBC releases new Line Of Duty clip

As if we didn’t get enough presents over Christmas, the BBC has now released a new clip from series five of Line Of Duty, one of the most eagerly anticipated crime shows for 2019.

In it, we see our fabulous threesome – DI Steve Arnott, Kate Fleming and Ted Hastings – in a grave, serious mood.

Here’s the clip:

🚨SOUND THE ALARM! IT'S THE WHOLE GANG BACK TOGETHER FOR THE NEW SERIES OF LINE OF DUTY. 🚨

Coming in 2019 to BBC One. @martin_compston @Vicky_McClure #LOD5 pic.twitter.com/AROsjcm5zJ

— BBC One (@BBCOne) December 26, 2018

Hastings, of course, is right to look nervous – is he the man behind the over-arching conspiracy?

Expect this in the spring.

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Line Of Duty V casting revealed by BBC

Last week we brought you the news that Stephen Graham was to join series five of Line Of Duty, Jed Mercurio’s hot cop thriller. Now we not only get confirmation from the BBC, but also more casting details.

Graham will play John Corbett alongside Rochenda Sandall (Girlfriends, Broken) as Lisa McQueen – two pivotal figures in a deadly organised crime group. Known to have links with corrupt police officers and suspected to be under direct command of the shadowy figure known only as ‘H’, Corbett and McQueen become persons of interest to AC-12 following an explosive chain of events.

Line Of Duty series five will follow a new case for AC-12 set nearly two years on from the hit crime drama’s previous instalment.

Joining regular series lead stars Vicky McClure (DS Kate Fleming), Martin Compston (DS Steve Arnott) and Adrian Dunbar (Supt. Ted Hastings), the new series will also see the return of Maya Sondhi as PC Maneet Bindra, Polly Walker as Gill Biggeloe, Aiysha Hart as DS Sam Railston, Tony Pitts as Det. Ch. Supt. Les Hargreaves and Andrea Irvine as Roisin Hastings.

They will be joined by Line Of Duty newcomers Taj Atwal, Richard Pepple as new regulars PC Tatleen Sohota and PS Kyle Ferringham, alongside Susan Vidler, Killing Times favourite Sian Reese-Williams, Ace Bhatti and Elizabeth Rider.

On joining Line Of Duty, Stephen Graham says: “It’s an honour to have been asked to be part of the Line Of Duty team. I’m especially looking forward to working with Martin Compston and Vicky McClure again.”

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