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?

@ImAncient

Is Carmichael a likeable character though? I’m not so sure the way AMM has played her is enough to carry a series. We will have to see.

AMM/JM would need to radically rethink the performance/writing of Carmichael if she’s to take a more central role in the future (assuming there is a future), as the overacted, one-note pantomime presentation of Carmichael we’ve had thus far would not fare well with more screen time.

Not read this all yet - I'm in the camp that thought it was a really good ending, realistic of the realities of institutional corruption/incompetence.

Last episode was just a bit boring?

I haven't read all 26 pages of this thread but here goes.

I was slightly disappointed at the end but, when I thought about it, that's how real life is. Evil is not defeated. A dim police officer, somehow (question left hanging) promoted beyond his competence is used to allow criminals to get away with violent crime, his only motivation is greed. Jed said the end goes back to the beginning, Buckells has always been there, being incompetent. The Powers that Be close ranks to cover their own backs - 'there is no systemic police corruption'. There was no overall big gang leader is was a variety of smaller factions split from Tommy Hunter's gang. Will Carmichael act on Ted's confession (possible opener for Series 7), I doubt it because it's too messy, she'll ignore it because she doesn't care.

Real life.

I thought the ending was OK.

I might just rewatch series 1. I loved Tony Gates character so much, with his stressed mouth twitch. That was my favourite series.

That's what I thought, he told her to make her complicit. If she acts she damages the top line about no corruption & potentially opens everything up since it goes to the top is AC 12, if she doesn't &
later it comes out proves corruption.

She can simply deny it or put it down to "not hearing" a poor old retiring obsessive in an emotional state.

Splitting and padding the last episode probably didn't do it any favours. The last two episodes as one continuous story would not have felt so flat.

I think ok, Buckells if we really must. But his interview was lame: we wanted drama! And that would have made his unmasking more credible, showing us a glimpse of him actually being quite clever. We could've seen the van swap under the flyover and that could've provided a little tension...

People are perfectly entitled to express disappointment (politely) and it was largely inevitable when there was so much frenzy. But I am reserving my own disappointment for some wholly unnecessary and vicious comments on SM.
Poor Jed. Keeps the nation gripped for the best part of two months in lockdown and delivers a credible ending without jumping the shark (which would have been equally lambasted). And gets his arse handed back to him on a plate.
Perhaps the social commentary sub-text of the next series could be on pack mentality, basic manners and a gross sense of entitlement.

Definately left it wide open for another series tho. With Carmichael in charge which I think it needs, the 3 musketeers are far too comfortable working together

Agree its time to shake up the musketeers. However by bringing back Carmichael as the full Cruella de Ville routine and reinforcing her as a blatant careerist first and not caring particularly about corruption it would take one hell of a character rewrite. Better to find a new face.

@CheekyWeeShite, agree with everything you said.

It was made clear from the start of S4 that the footage of Dot was filmed on a police bodycam - if I remember rightly Kate asked them to "get this" before speaking to him.

How a dying man struggling to breathe and probably having involuntary spasms and reflex movements led to "the biggest investigation into police corruption in AC12 history" I will never understand. Fucking Morse code indeed

I wanted Sindwhani to be a part of the last episode, before his shock resignation he tried to tell Ted he was too close but not quite there and Constable Wise seemed to be concerned about his conversations with Ted.

Every Jed drama I've watched ends in a total anti-climax with a realistic ending. I get the message he tries to make but there's such a huge build up that it becomes a let down. He's great at a beginning and a middle though

@CaptainMyCaptain

I haven't read all 26 pages of this thread but here goes.

I was slightly disappointed at the end but, when I thought about it, that's how real life is. Evil is not defeated. A dim police officer, somehow (question left hanging) promoted beyond his competence is used to allow criminals to get away with violent crime, his only motivation is greed. Jed said the end goes back to the beginning, Buckells has always been there, being incompetent. The Powers that Be close ranks to cover their own backs - 'there is no systemic police corruption'. There was no overall big gang leader is was a variety of smaller factions split from Tommy Hunter's gang. Will Carmichael act on Ted's confession (possible opener for Series 7), I doubt it because it's too messy, she'll ignore it because she doesn't care.

Real life.

So who promoted him? 🤔 If the promotion was to allow OCG in to the force? Sounds like it wasn’t accidental?

I thought the overall ‘reveal’ of Buckells being the 4th H and not a criminal mastermind but someone just passing on the messages of a splintered OCG was a credible ending. I liked the fact it combined a bit of a twist and them ‘getting their man’ without actually really succeeding - it isn’t as simple as being one master criminal controlling everything, but a network of corruption that will never really go away. That bit was mostly solid (though I am not sure how much the fact that Jo knew all along that Buckells was controlling the operation actually fits with their behaviour through the series).

I do think this entire season has suffered from being very exposition-heavy and all the main developments that led us to Buckells happening off-screen (mostly super-Chloe doing months of intensive police work on her own in minutes?). Jo’s storyline felt quite tangential to rather than entwined in the plot, and with a few exceptions it didn’t seem like any of the actions of Kate, Steve and Ted were really driving the plot - outside of some of the big set-pieces, it often felt like they were observers rather than participants.

I agree that the ending was indeed reflective of ‘real life’.

But huge swathes of the show beforehand were anything but ‘real life’, and it’s the weird juxtaposition that’s unsatisfying.

Switching the timbre between the underwhelming reality of real-life hierarchical corruption and incompetence and Hollywood-style action scenes makes for an odd mix.

I’m sure that the vast majority of police work is free from jaw-dropping revelations and relies more upon the kind of dogged office work that was heaped entirely on poor Chloe this season (seriously, give that woman a huge raise. She’s worked her arse off!). But setting the procedural plotting against the ‘flash-bang’ action scenes and convoluted twists is hard to balance.

@CheekyWeeShite

Haven’t we already been through this?

Body cams from the crews that turned up.

The morse code shit was totally bolted on bollocks though.

Missed that, thanks!

I think the rather bleak ending would have been better received if we weren't in the middle of a lock down in a pandemic. Kind of feel sorry for JM.

I don’t want a realistic drama with political commentary I wanted escapism and the good guys catching the bad guys and yes it’s a ‘Hollywood ending’ but I wanted it because I wanted to escape the dreariness of the news and reality this and wanted all those bad eggs to get their comeuppance

Yes I have a foot in this camp. I know that in real life the culprits at the top of wrong doing (in any arena) do not have to take consequences. However in drama which plays fast an loose with realism I want Osborne banged up as well as the minnows.

The witness protection idyll for Jo and the magic finding of supported living for Terry were not particularly realistic, so why couldn't we prove the top dogs rather than letting them shut down their only threat and give immunity to their corrupt minnows.

'When people are complaining about this episode it does help to set in context that there have been other daft bits. But they weren't obsessed on by everyone because people weren't watching and talking about it to this extent.'

Yes...lots of viewers seem to want LOD to be both totally accurate and true to life and also full of outlandish twists and turns. The final episode was always going to disappoint because people can't just relax and let it be what it is, rather than what they want it to be.

The actor who played Buckells has just been interviewed on BBC breakfast.

He was asked about the smirk Buckells gave as they locked him up and said it was because he knows that he won't be inside for long, and it will be brushed under the carpet, due to the focus being taken away from "a few bad apples" by Osborne, Carmichael etc. Literally scaling back AC12 and like it said at the captions at the end, currently AC12s powers have never been weaker.

He said he got a text from Jed during first lockdown when they suspended filming and had only seen 3 scripts, telling him that he was H (or the 4th man) and the cast were then sent the last 4 scripts, so they've all known and kept this under wraps for a year before filming recommenced. He told his wife, who was sworn to secrecy.

He also said he totally understood that some viewers would feel initially disappointed with the final episode, but hoped that when they reflected on it, they realised that the main message wasn't about finding out who H was - but how the whole structure of uncovering police corruption is impossible and is being blocked. Hence the loose ends, and Ted's utter frustration at Carmichaels new set up.

He said some viewers felt cheated perhaps because they wanted the police shoot out, "Urgent Exit Required" ending but real life and policing isn't like that - and this series reflected the reality of that.

Jed has just tweeted an AC-12 banner with the words Carry the Fire.

I am hoping for a season 7 but I do wonder if it’s the original cast bowing out and moving on with Carmichael in charge, Chloe etc.

I also wonder if the blandness of last nights episode wasn’t helped by COVID restricting how and when they filmed.

Jed has just tweeted an AC-12 banner with the words Carry the Fire.

and comments turned off 😂😬 The quoted retweets though 😆

Just to tag on the end here, I’ve not read all comments, and I e just watched the last one.
Well, what a disappointment !!
There has to be another series - with Buckles smirking in his cell, with the faces Carmichael is pulling and what Ted said to her - there has to be. This is not finished. Ted did what he did to see if Carmichael is involved.

Covid didn’t restrict the excitement in other episodes so don’t think it would have in the finale

Carmichael is a good character but not a leading character would soon get bored of her passive aggressiveness

Wait. Didn’t they discover that Carmichael was also bent, but decided not to disclose it? So why did ted hand her his confession? And now we know ted is trying to push back his resignation, but we don’t know if it worked?

I’m confused.

I didn’t hugely invest in jo. And the happily ever after scene was quite cheeseball.

Remember the scene with the bent lawyer Jill bigaloe on her witness protection, the beach, the crappy car and the crappy house...

Wasn’t it Carmichael that had spelled the word wrong ? I thought it was her being marched in under guard.

I don't actually care if there is another series or not. I doubt if I'll watch it, because the last two series (although this one was I think better than 5) are not a patch on series 1-3. There is only so long they can keep this going, with us thinking we need another series to tie it all up. That's what we wanted at the end of series 5 - and they have, just in a low key not very exciting way.
The main issues with this series for me are: Jo wasn't empathetic enough, she was bland and two dimensional - none of the charisma of Gates, or Denton. I never cared about her like Kate did. We never met Gail so weren't invested in her. Ryan had such potential, but was killed off screen and after threading him through the series from the first as a young lad, it just fizzled out like a damp squib.
The really good bits (when Jonesy was shot) - the ambush, etc., stood out because they reminded us of the early series - but the rest of it was just various threads that went nowhere, with a jaded cast.
I think a further series would just carry on down this path. It was fantastic - now it's good, but it's had its day.

Still not sure how I feel about the last epsiode. It still felt a bit rushed and jumbled at the end to me. I feel like Covid restrictions had a big impact on this series and more could have been made of Ryan, Chloe and Chris to name a few.

As others have said I think the juxtaposition between high drama and mundanity is what is jarring. The ending is realistic and probably more reflective of how police corruption works but all the way up to now that is not what the series has been about.