Line of Duty Thread 9, no spoilers! Watch along as we find out (?) wtf is going on!

[TedisnotH]

Reporting in, fellas. Let's fill up Thread 8 first though, ok?

The one thing that really annoyed me is when they acted like it was a mystery who had been implicated in the evidence they found and they hid the identity - it could only have been Buckells because the most recent handwritten notes were from Operation Lighthouse. All that “ooh who could it be?” treated the audience like idiots, which is quite annoying.

I thought for one awful moment that Kate was going to snog Steve, that would have been one step too far.

I thought that at one point too.

It would have been so wrong.

What I’ve learnt is that no one can write a good ending! I knew they’d go all Game of Thrones. It was a damp squib imo. Best bit was that dog and Jo living out her lesbian cottage core life 🤣

Vigil bbc submarine drama is not written by Jed M just the same production company as LOD.
Looks good tho.

If you watch the Real Line of Duty documentary (bloody excellent) about police corruption in the 60s-70s then Buckles was the man, greed, pure greed.

Even so, I wanted a Kate with a rifle and Osborne finale.

@Frazzled2207

The den of geek link posted above is useful but again it says that it was an hour and a half long which makes me think we simply missed half an hour!

The stretched it from 90 mins to two hours and split into two.

Which in hindsight was a really bad idea as there was clearly a lot of filler

@Iamtooknackeredtorun

He wasn’t “top dog”. It was made clear in season 5 that Dot was referring to a group of four corrupt people within the organisation doing the same thing as him

But he was the one sending l the messages including the one about killing Kate. If he's been that close to the OCG for so long he will have been close to loads of killings. It's implied that he was giving orders to the OCG in series 5 so why would Banks say 'that's what happens to a rat'. Surely Buckells is more senior than Banks?

None of that group of OCG actually knew the identity of who they were talking to IIRC

If you want a brilliantly written crime / police series with a perfectly written ending, I advise starting on The Shield. I believe it’s on Prime now, also All4. As much as I’ve enjoyed LoD, The Shield makes it look like Midsummer Murders.

The bit I've never been able to believe is that only one police officer misspells definitely.

Well that was most certainly a damp squib. Most disappointing.

The Wire was utterly brilliant at exposing institutional failure

It was brilliant so was the finale episode

But The Wire is an exceptional series

LOD is a great series but not quite as good as Prime Suspect and Cracker but close

Didn't Ted misspell definitely last series?!

All I can say is thank god most of us arent working tomorrow.
Now that would have been extra disappointing.

It was definitely believable that Buckells would misspell it!

So what was all the child abuse/Jimmy Saville stuff about? I thought it was going to point to a massive uncovering!

Also Lomax is bent. Prove me wrong 🤣

I don't get the love for The Shield. I thought it was crap.

Ted misspelt definitely when he was pretending to be H.

Amidst all the whinges, a fair number of tweets about the strong message of depressingly tolerated institutional corruption actually shining an unambiguous light on the current government.
Buckells being Boris.

Thats one fan theory I'd buy.

Does the fact there was no “Ted retired/Carmichael arrested him... Kate was promoted... Steve cured his ED and went back to shagging women he shouldn’t” bit at the end mean there is another series do people think?

Right, so I don't get why there was all the mystery last week of not seeing Kate shoot Ryan and then no explanation for running off with Jo.

Also, Jo said she was terrified of the man who she thought was her father, that he was pulling her strings and making her do the bad stuff. How can that have been Fairbanks when he's locked up and losing his marbles. Surely Jo would know he's in prison and not a threat anymore? At one point I did think Fairbanks was putting on a huge act of not remembering. But what was the point of bringing Fairbanks back in?

Even if there is another series will people bother after this one? Will depend I think. It’s so disappointing & I’m not sure I would. I probably will but no guarantee. Some of the theories on here were better than that episode.

Three Familes 10th May looks really good drama from the makers of Three Girls.
Hopefully 100 times better than tonight's final lol

Taken me ages to catch up on this thread.

Bloody hell - I’m issuing a Reg 15 to approx 90% of people on here. What’s wrong with all you wee fellas?!

That was a great episode. Loved the underpass switch. And, as I said a couple of threads ago, Chloe would continue to keep beavering away to come up with important information.

At the end of the day, they clarified two murders - Gail and Lawrence.

They also highlighted perfectly just what that “thin” line of duty is.

For Buckles it was a mixture of “choice” and greed. Obviously started years ago, probably pressured as a younger officer, but his greed took over to amass a property portfolio. Basically, zero fucks given until shit starts to get real and he starts to see consequences too close to home (witnessing Lakewell death).

For Davidson it was enforced and ingrained from a very early age - both personally and professionally. The mix of the two make it even worse. Her ending is difficult - on the one hand she deserves to be punished, but on the other hand her while existence was a punishment and so the dream cottage etc feels like compensation for her.

For Ted, it was pure drive and frustration. To him, what at first seemed like a small indiscretion, turned out to have serious consequences. He will continue to find that difficult to live with - his confession to Carmichael was perfect.

I don’t get why everyone is so disappointed re Buckles! It was perfect. He is NOT the mastermind, but was utilised for years. Leaves it open for S7 - top dog is most definitely still out there.

And I agree with a few pp who say that this episode was also a reflection on how corruption will always exist, no matter how much we want a neat ending.

Now, need to go feed the wee donkey - as you were.

Underwhelming but finales often are. What was disappointing (and it could have been covid driven) was the way most of the later part of the series was exposition heavy. Only Chloe seemed to move the story on.

And what with the Fairbank stuff? It was an unnecessary interview interrupted by Chloe's spell check.

If it was 90 mins turned into 2x1hr episodes, then there was 30 mins of padding in the final episode.

Things that I think would have made the last two episodes better:

• some sort of Kate interview
• Jo not ending up in some sort of boden advert. What did she even give them to get witness protection? I think it would have been more interesting if at the end she’d played the team.
• some form of mild peril where it actually mattered they Steve didn’t have is gun. The stupid taser scene doesn’t count because there were a ton of armed police.
• Some sort of discussion of Lomax
• not ignoring Steph in the final episode.