Ok, it’s not as popular as it used to be but it’s been tense stuff tonight. To finish tomorrow..
And H was Buckles?
The Snooker has more tension than Line of Duty (Includes Spoilers)
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Was that a spoiler? Good job I didn’t understand it if so.
Like Rock Music, I remember when Line Of Duty was good.
Yes no spoilers in titles please. I very nearly saw that before watching.
So it was all run by someone who’d been promoted above their ability to do the job, someone who’s a bit of a buffoon.
Hmm .
@hubert-rawlinson
I think that was the point Mercurio was trying to make. Could have been worse, they
might all have been dead like they were in at least two other hugely popular shows
from the Before Times whose names I won’t mention.
Glad I’d stopped checking the blog before I tuned in for last night’s final episode though.
If you’re going to drop a spoiler like that, surely the considerate way to do it is by opening a thread that invites speculation before the show has aired and then discusses the reveal the following day.
@Jaygee I’m sure it was.
Was the spoiler comment to Freddie though?
Sorry, meant “you” In the non-specific sense.
Should have written “anyone”.
Apologies all round
Last night’s episode was a surprise to me, but only in that it was the first episode in all six seasons that I thought was dull.
Dull, you say? I’m interested!
The first couple of episodes this season took a while to get going.
Well. Apologies. I didn’t mean to upset anyone, genuinely wasn’t thinking.
And thanks to the invisible mods.
I’ve not seen it since the first episode which convinced me my time would be better wasted elsewhere. Looking at last night’s episode just to see what the fuss was about I found it melodramatic, badly scripted — “No one makes mugs of AC-12!” –, hard to believe (the insant change from silent treatment to admitting everything) and lacking in any tension, with slightly strange performances from certain characters, for example the woman in charge. People are easily pleased I guess.
I know I am.
But last night’s wasn’t the episode to judge the programme on. Previous seasons have been much better, previous episodes in this season have been better. In a way I suppose it was a good way to end it, as it’s the only episode I’ve watched without being in the slightest bit curious to see another.
It seems there were 13 million “easily pleased” last night, more than any previous series.
They weren’t best pleased by the time the credits rolled…
Something about popularity not equating to quality…
There’s been a lot of debate about the pros and cons of the conclusion, but what spoiled this series for me was the increasingly clunky dialogue, which hit a low during the final episode. It seemed that every word Ted spoke was a speech rather than a conversation or instruction. It all left me feeling “Mehh!”
A bit of an anticlimax but I see it as laying the groundwork for the next (final?) series. I still can’t make my mind up about Carmichael.
Certainly looks to be a setup for another series. Carmichael’s looks of worry and confusion, Hastings appealing at his enforced retirement, Buckles smile as the door closed. It was all a bit neat the way it was just admitted … there’s more to come. Although the anti-climax of this one may make it harder to pull a big audience from episode 1
While I still watched S5 and S6, did so with considerably less anticipation than I did after the show Jumped the shark with the ambiguous message at the end of S4.
Over the weekend I watched the final episodes of Viewpoint, Keeping Faith, and Line of Duty.
All of them had weak & disappointing endings – “Is that it!”
With Line of Duty, it was such a downbeat and perfunctory conclusion. The “big reveal” was not teased out through detection, instead “Ok I give up! It was me.”
Then the final few minutes were tied up as a “burying bad news, we will never mention this again, move on” situation.
After such a build up, it was always likely to be an anticlimax, but it wasn’t a satisfying conclusion.
I just hope the snooker doesn’t have Shaun Murphy at the mid session interval shaking hands & saying “I don’t want to play anymore.”
This was the first series that seemed to drift (it didn’t jump the shark at the end of S4 – the Corbett story was pretty compelling). Various plot lines emerged (Arnott’s health, Fleming having left AC12, Hastings retirement, Carmichael’s return) but none of them developed into anything dramatic, just tying up some loose ends.
The show seemed hobbled by Arnott and Fleming no longer being on the same team, and Davidson as the primary baddie was just way too weak. Pilkington was much better but a plot opportunity wasted. The show failed to develop any real tension; in previous series the main protagonist always seemed to have a plausible way out until the last 15 minutes or so.
It’s not clear how much the plot was compromised by filming during the pandemic. There were some obviously clunky outdoor conversations, but key plot elements – the murder of Gail Vella, and Thurwell’s involvement all happened off screen – maybe that was always the intent. Chief Constable Osborne’s inputs were also limited to press conferences which also rendered him a passenger instead of a real nemesis. It was stretched from 6 episodes to 7 which is odd given how little there was driving the plot.
Worth another series? Doesn’t look like it based on this, but chucked a new story and maybe a new character or two, I’d tune in.
It’s always been a pretty ridiculous series, albeit very enjoyable. I think series 2 with Keeley Hawes may have been the peak, but I wouldn’t mind if there is one last one. I think this one was pretty good especially episodes 2-5 or so.
[Spoiler]
What I want to know is who was shot in the “armed robbery” at the start? Did I miss an explanation about this and more about who took part in it?
No-one does “looking absolutely miserable beyond anything previously experienced by anyone who has ever lived” better than Ms Hawes. I have this image of the director just yelling “Think Tindersticks!” between takes.
Well Kelly MacDonald had a go in this series. I think she smiled with her dog and redhead in the last 30 seconds of the series for the first time.
The quick answer is no-one important. The robbery was set up by the OCG so that Davidson could divert the team going to arrest Banks.
Yes I am aware of that, the shooting seemed unnecessary though so I wondered if it meant anything.
The amateur robber didn’t immediately comply, so the armed police shot him. It was a result of the gang’s naivety.
Never watched it but the snooker was excellent then and now.
How do you know?
Because I am/was watching it.
The Snooker that is.
👀
@uncle-wheaty
It is. Building nicely hopefully. Used to watch it all the time 30 or 40 years ago.
Jed’s currently working on a 7-season ‘Line of Snooker’ in which ‘H’ turns out to be evil genius Hazel Irvine, intent on a dastardly plot to helm a rather sedate form of TV entertainment involving essentially dull people pushing balls around tables. Drat… I’ve just given away!
Pot Black Ops?
😀
We could jazz it up a bit by having Hazel put someone else in the frame for being H
Someone? Surely 15 red herrings would be required to fill the frame?
“Mary mother of God, that’s a bad miss….”
On the subject of red herrings, there was an amusing bit on Norn Iron panel show The Blame Game where James Nesbitt’s agent calls him up and says “Great news James, I’ve got you on the new series of Line Of Duty” and Mr N goes “Fantastic! I better keep my schedule free for a couple of months of filming..”
Or we could find out that Steve Davis has been working under baize cover all these years.
Cue applause
HENDRY!
Could we perhaps petition the mods to amend the thread title to read “snookers” rather than “spoilers” to reflect the more sporting direction its contents have taken?
Inside Number 9 and Motherland are back in a double bill next week on BBC2. A few years back it seemed quite a few comedy shows made the journey from Beeb 3 to 2 to 1 as they picked up viewers over successive series, as opposed to blander fare which came out of the factory machine tooled for the jumpier Beeb 1 viewer, more used to Terry and June type stuff.
I suppose you could argue it’s not an issue in these days of iPlayer and “I’ll catch it later on Netflix”, but Line Of Doodee got to those 13 million viewers after The Beeb made quite a bit of fuss about it.. (and, yes, I know history tells us that quirky humour/horror will never get quite so many viewers as frowny detectives standing over dead bodies)
Whatever you thought of The Scooby Doo ending in which the criminal mastermind turned out to be Benny friom Crossroads in an Al Capone mask, the decision to run the show week by week meant S6 of LoD was indeed event TV.
Motherland is a work a genius.
Anna M-M is brilliant at comedy but I thought she was rubbish in Line of Duty – all that ‘get-me-I’m-a-baddie’ muttering.
Is co-creator and occasional scriptwriter Graham Linehan still allowed to work on the show after he was declared a non-person by the Trans lobby for daring to say something they didn’t like?
He didn’t simply dare to say something they didn’t like.
He was banned from Twitter for life for constant abuse and obsessive pestering of anyone vaguely supportive of Trans people. Even Frankie Boyle blocked him.
What’s his problem? I mean Neil Young’s made better albums, but….
Don’t get Linehan started on Greendale …
Has he got a problem with Postman Pat?
“Oh, I suppose it’s got to be feckin’ PostPERSON Pat now!’
The snooker is getting good now
Tense, isn’t it? I haven’t watched in years buts it’s blowing a hoolie outside and I’m enjoying a glass of port with the final.
Anybody who spells definitely with an a should be jailed anyway.
Absolutaly.
I think the word you’re looking for is “goaled”, Moosey
My initial underwhelm (at LOD, not the antics on the baize) was replaced by a sense of admiration for the banality-of-evil realism. They ‘got’ Buckells not via one of the celebrated, protracted interrogation scenes, but via a quietly, dully realised damned-if-you-do, utterly buggered if you don’t scenario.
In the hands of another writer, Carmichael would have had an 11th hour shift to doing the honourable thing, but no, this is England 2021 (almost another Vicky McClure outing), and not rocking the boat, keeping one’s head down, sticking to the latest zeroes and ones rulebook is what we do.
LOD was a decent ending. It was always going to disappoint 75% of fans who have their theories a plenty. What I liked about it was that feeling that the 4th man was actually still a pawn in the bigger game and was going to take one for the team. And Carmichael was such a good character. All kinds of things I would find frightening in a senior police officer and right on the cusp of being ridiculous. This is a crime drama after all – not a documentary.
I’ve come round to Blue & Leeds boys’ ways of thinking. The baddies are still the baddies. The bent cops got dragged in one way or another but were all underlings. No clandestine network for poor Ted.
I think Gary is right too. That’s the end of it. I won’t be watching any more.
Mark Selby is “H”? Cool, calculating, brutal and domineering. Perfect villain material.
Perhaps Jed M is reacting to the idea that we need to believe in conspiracies because, on recent political evidence, that’s potentially a bit of a black hole.
Who needs conspiracy theories? Boris lies, gets found out, lies, gets found out and wins every time. In real life Buckles would be pm, not this tosh about conscientious objection bringing him down.