UK Series Line Of Duty

[Willie Oleson]

The quest to uncover the corrupt officers and also the Top Man made me think of The Prisoner (Number Six) and his battles with the various Number Two's who are working for the mysterious Number One.
In regard to the spectacularly institutionalised corruption overseen by some kind of super-villain Line Of Duty comes up short in what was supposed to be the last series.
But the "mundanity" of the various connected, semi-connected and unconnected corruption stories, mostly with antagonists who had not planned to become part of it, may be much more unsettling. Corruption can happen spontaneously, some people will only realise it after the fact and then it becomes very difficult to reverse that situation.

The DVD extra is a compilation of mini-interviews and Kelly Macdonald reveals that she's a fan of the series but she still has some catching up to do. I guess she has more restraint than I do.
Her LOD character ends up in cosy country house surrounded by autumn leaves, like in those relaxing youtube videos.

What can I do to become a Protected Witness?


This is Perry Fitzpatrick (according to IMDB) and he has a terrific deep voice, the kind of "quoting the telephone book and it still sounds entertaining" voice.
And because he doesn't look like the man with that voice it's always surprising when he starts talking.
Hopefully he returns in series 7.
Ted Hastings has retired, or can they reverse it? It looks like AC-12 is stuck with the passive-aggressive Patricia "I can't bear shouting" Carmichael.
If that's the situation then she better be nice to Steve and Kate!

 

[Willie Oleson]

Let's see what The Guardian had to say about Series Six

the identity of the person known for nearly five series as “H” (before being recently retooled as “the fourth man”; a reverse-ferreting second in its deranged audacity only to Dallas retconning its entire ninth season as a Pamela Ewing dream while Bobby was in the shower).

Always nice to see a beloved soap classic getting mentioned, even if it is in a negative way.

For the most part in this series they have been reduced to exercises in memorising abbreviations and exhibit numbers and skirted dangerously close to self-parody in the process.

To be honest, some of it sounds like a verbal exam, droning on all the rules from the Police School Book (section blabla under the act of blabla paragraph 4E (1) according to the law in 1984 blabla) but that's how it's been done from the very beginning. They are very serious and everything has to be done to the letter, and sometimes it looked a bit funny but not in a bad way.

There have been in this – possibly final – season some plot holes that belied Mercurio’s reputation for watertight narratives (most notably Kate’s decision to Thelma and Louise it with Davidson after she shot Ryan Pilkington, played by Gregory Piper, in clear and legal self-defence)

This is true, I couldn't figure out what Kate and Jo's escape was meant to achieve.

Relative newcomer Shalom Brune-Franklin, as the young AC-12 officer Chloe Bishop, has become a cult hero online by virtue of the fact that her role has been mostly a matter of bringing evidence she has pieced together off screen – CCTV footage, financial records, recovered files, matching signatures – to Hastings et al who then congratulate her on solving the latest stage of the case

Well, they are paid to do something. But, yes, if the story requires new developments they can always rely on super-resourceful Chloe to serve up the latest plot twists, as did Maneet before her.
I always love the "records of this-or-that don't exist anymore but I found it anyway" explanation.

It was all fine. But, oh my, you should have seen it when it was good.

LOD is a specific crime sub-genre with a long-running story arc therefore it's difficult to keep it perfectly fresh.
But the characters, new or returning, were always fresh, imo.