Rotten apples

Re­leased in 2012, the British se­ries Line of Duty has be­come a cult se­ries for lovers of po­lice drama. The first sea­son aired on BBC Two and im­me­di­ately be­came a favourite of crit­ics and au­di­ences alike. Its cre­ator and screen­writer, Jed Mer­cu­rio (Body­guard), man­aged to tell a more or less typ­i­cal story of cor­rupt cops in a re­al­is­tic and plau­si­ble way, with a fair amount of in­trigue and plot twists to com­pletely en­gage view­ers. Thus, a rather mod­est se­ries – in the first sea­son there are no spec­tac­u­lar scenes – has es­tab­lished it­self as one of the best prod­ucts of Britain’s pub­lic broad­caster. It is cur­rently in its sixth sea­son, which Mo­vis­tar has just re­leased (you can also watch the first four sea­sons on Net­flix ).

The se­ries re­volves around the in­ter­nal af­fairs unit of the Birm­ing­ham po­lice, where Sergeant Steve Arnott ar­rives against his will (the actor Mar­tin Comp­ston, who is also a self-de­clared Scot­tish pro-in­de­pen­dence ac­tivist). Arnott was pre­vi­ously as­signed to an anti-ter­ror­ist unit but an in­vol­un­tary mis­take dur­ing an op­er­a­tion, and his un­will­ing­ness to cover it up de­spite the wishes of his su­pe­ri­ors, causes him to be trans­ferred to the anti-cor­rup­tion unit AC-12.

First he sees it as a pun­ish­ment, until he dis­cov­ers the im­por­tance of in­ves­ti­gat­ing his col­leagues’ dirty laun­dry, de­spite the un­easi­ness it pro­vokes in the other of­fi­cers. In the first sea­son, AC-12 in­ves­ti­gates the work of a se­ri­ous crimes unit, which has a sus­pi­ciously high case res­o­lu­tion rate, led by De­tec­tive Tony Gates (played by actor Lennie James, Mor­gan in The Walk­ing Dead). Gates is a very pop­u­lar po­lice of­fi­cer, re­cently dec­o­rated as the best of­fi­cer of the year, but he has a few per­sonal prob­lems that will come to light and will lead him to a dead end. In his in­ves­ti­ga­tion, Arnott has the help of his part­ner Kate Flem­ing (the ac­tress Vicky Mc­Clure), who also has a com­pli­cated fam­ily life. Arnott and Flem­ing work under the su­per­vi­sion of Chief Hast­ings, a su­per­in­ten­dent with often am­bigu­ous be­hav­iour.

The se­ries’ strength is, above all, its re­al­ism. First of all, the pro­tag­o­nists are not the charis­matic po­lice of­fi­cers that we are used to see­ing in many po­lice se­ries, and pre­cisely be­cause of this they seem more cred­i­ble (both Comp­ston and Mclure have been nom­i­nated for and won var­i­ous awards for their per­for­mances). Their char­ac­ters are not per­fect, they re­veal con­tra­dic­tions, and they don’t al­ways get it right. The se­ries also faith­fully recre­ates dif­fer­ent po­lice pro­ce­dures, and Mer­cu­rio re­lied on ex­pert ad­vi­sors.

The suc­cess of the first sea­son con­tin­ued in those that fol­lowed, each with a six-episode for­mat, show­ing dif­fer­ent in­ves­ti­ga­tions that in some cases are linked to each other. The ex­ten­sive plots fea­ture po­lice and po­lit­i­cal cor­rup­tion, as well as the in­volve­ment of crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions. With a grow­ing num­ber of fans and with wide­spread in­ter­na­tional recog­ni­tion, more than 9.5 mil­lion Britons watched the first episode of the sixth sea­son when it aired.

TV Se­ries