The Chase:Line of Duty S3.

"Do you run, Steve?" - Sergeant Daniel Waldron

"I don't have to. No-one's chasing me" - DS Steve Arnott.

"Catching criminals is tough enough but catching coppers? God give me strength" - Superintendent Ted Hastings

As over twelve million people were watching, mostly with disappointment if the Internet is to be believed, the final denouement of the sixth, and possibly last, season of Line of Duty I was a mere lustrum behind. I was watching Line of Duty S3 (BBC2/iPlayer - initially aired in March/April 2016) and, unlike those millions of others, I had very little to complain about.

It was, like series one and series two, excellent and, in what clearly will be ongoing, it fed threads from those first two series into the narrative of the third. Line of Duty is not a show to watch in the wrong order. It's not, either, in places, a show for the faint hearted. Alongside the unmarked vans, the redacted files, the regular sound of sirens, and the Jiffy bags there is decapitation, hanging, and naked men being tied to chairs at gunpoint and kicked in the balls.

More cops die in Line of Duty than in an imperial phase Ice Cube album. It is not, however, torture porn. Very far from it. It is, in places, chilling and it can be, in series three especially I thought, spooky but it is also genuinely moving, particularly as this series handles some very troubling subjects, and it is incredibly gripping. Each and every episode of this series, and earlier ones, of Line of Duty twists and turns so much that sometimes you need to pause to catch your breath.

When Sergeant Danny Waldron (Daniel Mays) and his armed response team (PC Hari Bains (Arsher Ali), PC Jackie Brickford (Leanne Best), and PC Rod Kennedy (Will Mellor - yes, Jambo from Hollyoaks) shoot dead a hardened criminal in broad daylight, suspicions arise regarding the nature of his death and if Waldron, and his team have been responsible for an unnecessary death.

AC-12 are tasked with investigating and Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar), DS Steve Arnott (Martin Compston), DC Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure), and the taciturn but seemingly effective DI Matthew "Dot" Cottan (Craig Parkinson) find themselves thrown into a world of divided loyalties, tangled affairs, double crossing, the covering up of vital evidence, and threatening anonymous voices on the end of burner phones.

An absolute nest of vipers that has, in its wake, left a trail of lives ruined and lives cut short. The aggressive and defensive Sgt Waldron is, temporarily, placed on desk duty but when AC-12 start to look into the life of this dangerous man who has no friends and, TRIGGER WARNING, drinks mineral water in the pub it soon becomes a possibility that Waldron has been as much of a victim as he has potentially become a perpetrator of serious crime.

As the incredibly intricate story moves forward at a rapid clip, we're treated to a few Line of Duty staples. People say things you can't quite catch, Fleming goes undercover (of course - that's her job - but I couldn't help wondering why people haven't started recognising her), informal meetings are held on police station staircases and over drinks in busy pubs, even more informal meet ups happen in heavily graffitied subways, the threat of being relegated to "directing traffic" is bandied about, Arnott's father/son relationship with Hastings is mined relentlessly and efficiently, and there's that thing where Arnott asks a witness or suspect a question, they respond by saying they have the right to be interviewed by an officer at least a rank higher than themself, and then Hastings repeats the question.

Arnott's love life, too, remains not just a sideline to the main story but one of the drivers of it. He's living with his girlfriend DS Sam Railston (Aiysha Hart) but the relationship is being placed under stress due to the nature, and long hours, of his job and, even more so, by the release from prison of Lindsay Denton (Keeley Hawes). 

Denton, now mopping floors in Asda for a living, is determined to clear her name and if that means dragging down Arnott to do so, that's a price she's more than happy to pay. She's not the only who's intent of making Arnott's life hell and as scenes are played out in police interview rooms and we see multiple eyes of suspicion darting around, Carly Paradis' score nudges us towards making our own decisions about various characters.

Which, of course, with Jed Mercurio's dense and, er, mercurial narrative (this time aided by directors Michael Keillor and John Strickland) may prove to be incorrect decisions. AC-12 are drawn into a world of paedophile rings, Masonic handshakes, Catholic blocks, 'ear witnesses', and people who own way too many mobile phones. More than that they are drawn into a world of intense jeopardy and it is Arnott's earnest doggedness that means he experiences that jeopardy in its most exquisite, and deepest, form.

As Arnott, Compston is excellent but so is everyone else in Line of Duty S3 from McClure, Parkinson, Mays, and Hawes to Polly Walker as special counsel Gill Biggeloe, George Costigan (Bob from Rita, Sue and Bob Too) as a retiured Chief Superintendent, Patrick Fairbank, who may have the key to unlocking crucial evidence, Maya Sondhi as new recruit PC Maneet Bindra, and Jonas Armstrong as Joe Nash, a witness who has suffered, horrendously, at the hands of abusive and powerful men.

 

Even Neil Morrissey, a far better dramatic actor than I would have imagined, is back as DC Nigel Morton but it is Dunbar, and his extraordinarily expressive left eye - honestly, it almost needs a credit of its own, that is the heart of this drama as he tries to hold together a police force, a world, that has lost all sense of what it exists for.

An image of Jimmy Savile, a missing list, what seems to be a once a series special scene of a guilty partner hallucinating in a toilet, and the continuing search for the elusive 'Caddy' made series three of Line of Duty, perhaps, the tensest so far and yet that underlying sense of jeopardy of which I wrote earlier in this piece is finely balanced out by scenes of surprising tenderness, often when you least expect them. The fact that this is the third of sixth, so far, series means that, of course, not all loose ends are tied up in the last episode but, for me, that's good. It means I will soon be delving into series four, five, and, ultimately, six. Then I can find out if the episode considerably more people than me were watching last night really was a "damp squib". Mother of God.