So much telly spoon feeds you, and it’s really nice when there’s not even a spoon… you can’t even get in the packet of food,” comments comedian Sarah Millican. She is, of course, praising the thrillingly impenetrable Line of Duty.
Everything is cryptic; minor characters from three series ago suddenly pop up on screen; and half of the dialogue is in acronyms. Yet viewers still can’t get enough of Jed Mercurio’s perplexing police procedural.
The series delights in plunging viewers into the darkness as they fumble to their own (often wrong) conclusions. Luckily for us, BBC Sounds’ companion podcast Obsessed with… Line of Duty is on hand to offer illumination.
Hosted by actor Craig Parkinson, aka Line of Duty’s “baddie caddy” DI Matthew “Dot” Cottan, each episode interrogates the latest instalment of the series.
Parkinson is joined weekly by a new celebrity super-fan, such as Millican. They discuss their initial suspicions, air wild theories and attempt to decrypt what on earth all the police jargon actually means.
With a seven-episode bumper series, Line of Duty couldn’t have returned at a better time. The drama is sure to keep us all rapt as we attempt to crack the case. Superintendent Ted Hastings has managed to elude the slammer and is back in AC-12 with DS (now DI) Steve Arnott, but the band isn’t quite back together.
Having left AC-12, DI Kate Fleming is now working on the Hill with a new murder investigation team, led by her inscrutable adversary, DCI Joanne Davidson, played by Kelly Macdonald. They are looking into the murder of investigative journalist Gail Vella in Operation Lighthouse.
It is AC-12’s highest-profile investigation to date and, as expected, Mercurio won’t be hand-holding any viewers. Mercifully, the brainboxes behind Obsessed with… Line of Duty will have us all sucking on diesel.
