Line of Duty Series 2 Episode 4 Review

Line of Duty Series 2 Episode 4 Review

*This review contains spoilers*

I'm not really able to articulate just how good Episode 4 of Line of Duty Series 2 is. It's full of revelation after revelation throughout, with parts of the conspiracy starting to slot nicely into place, yet still leaving us feeling far away from knowing the full truth about what's going on.

For Denton, there's no denying that we're now being formally placed in the 'believe her to be innocent' pile. She at least receives what appear to be more lawful-good guards, has a visit to her dying mother, and is then kidnapped by two crooked members of the police when they ram the van she is being escorted in off the road.

Of those two officers, one is identified by Carly Kirk's parents as being a Detective who came and took away evidence from her bedroom and possessions, something which Fleming explains wouldn't be done in the way it was, immediately letting us know something was up. He happens to also be Carly's boyfriend. Said boyfriend was seen talking to Dryden at a dinner event, which Carly was also working, which happens to be on the night that Dryden apparently took the blame for a speeding fine in place of his wife, which gives him an alibi for the night Carly disappeared...and the second officer is the hitman who murdered Georgia in Episode 1. It's pretty clear now that Dryden is behind a lot of this, though there are still plenty of pieces of the jigsaw to slot in place.

One of the best scenes of the series takes place early on, as Fleming, Arnott and Cottan convince Hastings to let them bring in Dryden about the traffic violation, whilst also hoping to probe into his alleged relationship with Denton. It's a wonderfully hostile performance by Mark Bonnar as Dryden, who could easily be either a master villain or just a high-ranking officer who's pissed off at being brought in for questioning. His denial of having had previous contact with Denton is thrown out of the window later on with the exposure of phone records connecting the two, plus staff at a hotel they used to meet remembering them. Hastings reaction to the whole affair, too, is superb, with his conflict between his future career prospects and doing the right thing leading him to try and put off the inevitable. With the amount of evidence that will be brought to him at the start of the next episode, though, he'll have no choice but to allow further questioning.

Fleming's moral guilt comes into play, too, as she ends up in tears in a toilet cubicle over being incorrect about Denton's involvement. Someone else with guilt on their mind, though probably more fearing for their illegal activities from Series 1 (so I believe) coming to light than anything else, is Cottan; recordings that DS Akers made before her murder show the key witness talking about corruption in the police threatening the immunity he has been promised. He talks about 'the two-faced bastard' (or some such description), which another video shows to be Dryden, talking about never granting immunity. He also mentions another officer further down the chain of command, which the expression on Cottan's face can only indicate refers to himself. Naturally, he offers to follow up this detail himself, so the likelihood at this stage is he'll weasel his way out of it, which will mean more Craig Parkinson for Series 3, and therefore this is a very good thing indeed.

Denton's visit to her mother is emotionally traumatic, as you'd expect from someone in her position, and there's conflict within her when her guards fall asleep and she has the chance to escape out of the front door. It's more evidence for her innocence that she doesn't, though following her capture at the end she probably regrets not having made a run for it.

All in all, this was the best episode of Series 2 yet, with all the pieces moving together nicely. There's only two episodes to go, so we'll soon have the full truth with plenty more twists along the way. It's fantastic television, this, and even pausing to write this review is leaving me impatient to get on watching the next episode. UK TV dramas don't get much better than this.