Is Line Of Duty really ending?
Is Line Of Duty really ending? Five theories on where it can go next (Warning: spoilers) After Sunday night's Line of Duty finale, the fate of the show's core trio hangs in the balance. But are the BBC really going to let the most popular drama on TV peter out like that? We investigate… Ben Allen I can't believe I have to say this, but, no, Line Of Duty, the most-watched drama on British TV in 13 years, is not ending. Despite widespread speculation – and, yes, OK, they did tie a somewhat shoddy bow on six series worth of plot in Sunday's finale – there is no doubt in my mind that Hastings, Arnott and Fleming will be back to sniff out bent coppers at some point in the not too distant future.
The thing about bent coppers, as this show has expressed to us time and time again, is that they are bloody rampant. There's a meme that perfectly encapsulates this: two astronauts are floating in view of the entire earth. One, with a gun held to his head behind his back, says, "So it was all bent?" The other, presumably about to pull the trigger, responds: "Always has been." At the show's current trajectory, this really is where we're headed. And I'll be there, on the edge of my seat, watching as it happens alongside one sixth of the population.
While the BBC hasn't, at the time of writing, confirmed that the show will be back, writer Jed Mercurio has said that he's keen to carry on. Speaking on Jay Rayner's podcast in February, he said: "I really want to carry on with Line Of Duty. I think that series six proves that there is much more ground for us still to cover." Right. Case closed. Does anyone really think the broadcaster, currently desperate for some goodwill from the public, will say, 'No thank you, Jed Mercurio. We don't want to keep eleven million people happy. Good luck with future endeavours'? Not bloody likely. The main trio of actors – Martin Compston, Vicky McClure and Adrian Dunbar – have each individually expressed a desire to return to the bent copper business too.
So, the only real question is, where can the show go, now that it has tied up the mystery that made it a phenomenon?
It is no coincidence that Line Of Duty has enjoyed its highest ratings in the three-series period (last Sunday, 11.6m viewers tuned in, making it the most-watched BBC drama in 13 years) that has revolved around the hunt for "H" (which evolved, this series, into the hunt for "the fourth man"). The cult of personality around the show has grown ever stronger with the speculation about who this all-powerful bent copper could be. Now that we know who he is, viewers have one less reason to tune in, one less thing to speculate about online. Anyway. About that final episode. The fourth man was revealed to be Ian Buckells, a blubbering fool who turned out to be a fairly conniving bent cop, but a patsy all the same for the OCGs. It was a dissatisfying reveal, but, with almost ten years of speculation behind it, no one left on board would have been much better.
Worse, we received confirmation that our beloved papa Hastings, the righteous bent copper-sniffer-outter, did indeed tell gangster Lee Banks that there was a rat in his crew, in the knowledge that it would probably lead to John Corbett's death. He did, also, squirrel away £50,000 in OCG bribery money and pass it on to Corbett's wife in a thinly veiled act of atonement.
And, far worse, AC-12 merged with other anticorruption departments into one catch-all overrun by friends of the morally bankrupt chief constable Philip Osborne, with Hastings having been given the boot. Over a particularly emotionally manipulative clip of an unknown officer slowly taking down the pictures of each series primary antagonists – from Kelly MacDonald's Jo Davidson to Lennie James' Tony Gates – an extremely depressing caption read: "Currently AC-12's powers to curb wrongdoing in public office have never been weaker." The end. Yikes!
Where to next? Allow me to speculate…
Saving the soul of AC-12
The smart money is on this one. As the finale revealed, the police force is rotten at the very top and with AC-12 under Osborne's thumb, there is no one rooting out corruption at any level. Hastings, having confessed to Patricia Carmichael – after he had been forced to retire – that he passed on information to the OCG that led to the death of Corbett, is at risk of being stripped of his badge and serving jail time. Steve and Kate are either festering in an ocean of bentness or have left the force to pursue their other interests such as… oh, wait, never mind, they don't have any. Well, apart from shagging. Steve loves shagging.
Even if Carmichael does decide to keep that juicy morsel of information to herself, they could all be out of the anticorruption game when we see them next. But what is stopping them from mounting their own investigation from outside of the police? Perhaps, if Steve and Kate really do stick it out in AC-12, they could discreetly work with Hastings to try and bring the whole thing down from the inside. I'd watch it!
Patricia Carmichael's Line Of Duty
Somehow the most reprehensible, unbearable character on this entire show is not – to the best of our knowledge – a bent copper at all, but an obscenely passive-aggressive careerist. Carmichael, with her soft-spoken microaggressions, thus far has shown no real interest in rooting out corruption. And yet, she seemed to really take Ted's ridiculous final speech about justice and truth to heart. It was the first time we've seen her look anything other than pompous. So, maybe she really does have a bit of moral fibre in her. If so, she may well be able to lead Steve and Kate as they attempt to bring Osborne down. Who knows, maybe she'll even hire Hastings as a DI just so she can order him around and emasculate him a bit more. I'd watch it!
How Steve Arnott got his mojo back
OK, the scenes with Steve and his psychiatrist weren't exactly The Sopranos, but there's something to us learning a bit more about his interior life. At this stage, Steve's defining characteristics are boringness and horniness. But maybe, just maybe, he is an emotionally complex man.
At the end of series six, Steve is in a really bad way. He's addicted to painkillers. He's in a weird, nonsexual relationship with the widow of a dead colleague. His penis is, to the best of our knowledge, completely functionless, merely window dressing. There really must be a lot going on in that brain of his, beyond dreaming up different waistcoat-suit jacket combinations. So, perhaps Steve could lead the show all on his own, as he recovers from his addiction and gets all of his body parts back in working order. I'd watch it!
Ted Hastings: Prison Break
Steve has the plans for Blackthorn prison tattooed on his body and gets himself locked up so he can break his mentor out. I'd watch it!
Steve and Kate romcom
Steve and Kate spend 30 years calling each other "mate" in increasingly flirtatious ways, before eventually admitting that they're in love with one another when they're both old and sad and married. I… probably wouldn't watch that, to be honest.
Line Of Duty series one to six are available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
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