Line Of Duty viewers go wild as hit police drama returns

‘I couldn’t unhear it!’ Line Of Duty viewers go wild as they hear a VERY crude acronym and discover Kate’s shock twist as hit police show returns

SPOILER ALERT

Line Of Duty’s hotly anticipated sixth season kicked off with a bang on Sunday night.

The hit BBC show delighted viewers with several plot twists and even taught them a new acronym, with many hilariously mishearing it for something much cruder.

And although only being introduced in the first episode, new character Detective Chief Inspector Joanne Davidson [Kelly Macdonald] certainly made her mark and left many fans with more questions than answers.

It’s back! Line Of Duty’s hotly anticipated sixth season kicked off with a bang on Sunday night

One of the stand-out new terms from Sunday’s show was CHIS, which stands for Covert Human Intelligence Sources.

However many viewers revealed that they’d be hearing the much cheekier term ‘jizz’ for the majority of the intrigue-filled episode.

One particular scene with Davidson and DI Kate Fleming [Vicky McClure] saw them repeat the phrase several times with the women asking another officer to ‘help us locate your CHIS’.

One person tweeted: ‘This is the jizz handler?’ while someone else added: ‘Ah it’s CHIS… for half an hour I thought I’d been hearing JIZZ’

Shady? New character DCI Joanne Davidson certainly left her mark on the show

And another penned: ‘Everytime they said CHIS in that episode, I heard JIZZ. And they said it A LOT. And I couldn’t unhear it!’

The first episode of also saw several twists, perhaps most shockingly with the revelation that long-term AC-12 member Kate is now working with a new team.

While chatting to her new gaffer DCI Davidson, Kate says: ‘I got fed upon nicking coppers, I’d rather go after the psycho who murdered Gail [Vella].’

But despite seeming confident in her new role, some viewers were left wondering if all was at it seems and theorised that Kate could still be undercover for AC-12.

Oops! Several fans joked they’d been hearing the word ‘jizz’ rather than CHIS during the show

Entertaining: One scene with Davidson and DI Kate Fleming [Vicky McClure] saw them repeat the phrase several times with the women asking another officer to ‘help us locate your CHIS’

Another surprise twist came in the reappearance of Terry Boyle who was used by the OCG in previous series and famously had a body hidden in his freezer.

The character, who has Downs Syndrome, was arrested after a police raid on an address and mistakingly gave the wrong name to officers when questioned.

His involvement left many fans shocked at the development, with some saying they felt sorry for him being dragged back into the criminal activity.

One person tweeted: ‘Terry Boyle deserves to be left alone after years of exploitation at the hands of the OCG. Why do I feel like this ain’t gonna end well for him?’

While another theorised: ‘So Terry Boyle had a woman in his freezer in series 5 and now his freezer is missing, I’m in too deep already.’

Reappearance: Character Terry Boyle also reappeared in the episode after he was used by the OCG in past seasons

Tough viewing: Some fans said they felt sorry for Terry being dragged back into the drama

So clever: Others praised how the show always manages to have links back to past seasons

Adding to the intrigue, the raid itself also became suspicious as DCI Davidson seemed to be delaying her team’s arrival when she ‘spotted’ a robbery in place.

This potentially shady move tipped her as a ‘bent copper’ for most of the hour-long show but in true Line Of Duty style things got more complex at the end.

DCI Jo was then revealed as being romantically involved with one of her staff, Farida, who had earlier reported her to DS Arnott to look into as being corrupt.

This new information caused some fans to question whether Jo really is corrupt, or just being set up by an angry ex-lover.

Elsewhere fan favourite DS Steve Arnott [Martin Compston] was seen rocking a bigger beard than usual and struggling with his pain problems from past series.

Angry ex-lover or informer? Farida reported her boss Davidson to DS Arnott to look into as being corrupt, but it was later revealed they were previously romantically involved

Trust noone! DCI Davidson was called Jo by her colleagues but her name was listed as Samantha on police records

The gaffer: Hastings looked a little more withdrawn than usual but managed to get a killer one-line in while chatting to Arnott, telling him: ‘What you waiting on? Puff of white smoke?’

She looks familiar: One of the show’s first scenes featured an actress who looked remarkably like former PM Theresa May

One scene saw the officer buying lots of tablets before taking several at his flat – and washing them down with a bottle of Corona beer in an apparent nod to the current pandemic.

Fans had been chomping at the bit to see what unfolds in the season premiere of Line Of Duty, with the cast and showrunner all teasing morsels of information in recent press calls.

Martin Compston, who plays DS Steve Arnott, said: ‘I feel like the last two series have been building up to this one. There is a lot going on. There will be a lot of big questions answered. But all the drama that everyone loves will be there too!’

Series six will follow the dynamic AC-12 trio investigating the force’s highest profile murder to date.

New role? While chatting to her new gaffer DCI Davidson, Kate says: ‘I got fed upon nicking coppers, I’d rather go after the psycho who murdered Gail [Vella]’

What IS she up too? Many fans didn’t believe that Kate had actually left AC-12 and suggested she might be undercover, despite her telling conversation in the car with Arnott

Guest lead Detective Chief Inspector Joanne Davidson (Kelly Macdonald) is assigned as the senior investigating officer on the unsolved murder case, but her suspicious conduct attracts the attention of the anti-corruption team.

Shalom Brune-Franklin, 26 — who has appeared in BBC’s Our Girl alongside Michelle Keegan — is the new addition to AC-12 as Detective Constable Chloe Bishop.

Some viewers branded the finale of the fifth series, which aired in May 2019 and drew more than nine million viewers, as an ‘anti-climax’, after it was revealed that mysterious criminal mastermind H was in fact code for four people.

So fans will be hoping the show finally reveals the fourth person’s identity — and the teaser suggests it might not be a man they are looking for.

Dapper: DS Arnott seemed to have a fuller beard in this series – and kept his iconic waistcoat

Good one: He was seen taking his pills with a Corona beer, in an apparent nod to the pandemic

New AC-12: Shalom Brune-Franklin, 26 — who has appeared in BBC’s Our Girl alongside Michelle Keegan — is the new addition to the AC-12 team as Detective Constable Chloe Bishop

This series of the Jed Mercurio drama also features seven episodes, making it the longest to date.

And speaking ahead of the first episode airing, Jed revealed ‘nobody on the show is safe’ as killing off AC-12’s three main stars ‘is never far from my thoughts’.

He told a Q&A: ‘One of things about the show is nobody is safe. It keeps the audience on the edge of their seat so I know it would be a sad day, but all the main cast realise it could be possible.’

While Adrian Dunbar admitted it was a ‘shock’ to see the series come together after the trailer was released earlier this month.

The actor, 62, admitted he found shooting series six ‘difficult’ as the Covid pandemic meant they had to film in a non-chronological order, due to safety measures in place.

Adrian said of filming: ‘Jed and the directors had to remind me sometimes exactly where we were because we were jumping between scenes.

‘You know, it’s sometimes difficult how to pitch something when you’re moving, as Vicky said, between directors and episodes.

Safety measures: Vicky McClure, who plays DI Kate Fleming, explained a whole new set was built for AC-12’s interview room to improve ventilation amid the Covid pandemic

‘I did find that pretty difficult, it was strange. Normally we shoot in blocks. We have one director for the first three episodes, then another because it is so complicated.

‘We’re used to that system but Covid just threw that completely. When I saw the trailer the other day it was a shock to me, because we saw the storyline compressed.

‘It had taken so long to do it and you have lots of elements of this storyline that as actors you’re not in possession of all the elements.

‘Once you see it all together you think “god this really think is going to be something else.” And that slipped my mind, let’s put it like that.’

Producer Simon Heath explained how the show had to be halted in its fourth week of filming, two weeks before the nation was plunged into lockdown.

Some of the cast and crew had been experiencing Covid symptoms and, with testing not being readily available, both Simon and writer Jed Mercurio decided to shut the production down all together.

When they returned months later, rigorous safety procedures were enforced to minimise the risk of anyone catching the virus.

Who is H? Show-runner Jed has previously confirmed he knows how the H storyline will end but refused to reveal if viewers will uncover it in series six

Vicky McClure, who plays DI Kate Fleming, also explained a whole new set was built for AC-12’s interview room to improve ventilation.

‘We built a set so that we had a ventilation system, you know, say AC-12 the interview room wasn’t great for Covid, it’s a glass box,’ she said.

Vicky added: ‘The chronological order of the episodes wasn’t possible because we were bound by location and safety.’

The nature of filming meant the producers shot more footage than planned and so had a dilemma about how the show would conclude.

Jed explained the decision behind extending the series from six episodes to seven.

He said: ‘It would have ended early if we had six. It wasn’t the case of planning seven, it’s the effect of the interruption shooting, for all kind of reasons related to safety.

‘What we found when we got to the end, we initially conceived having a 90-minute episode six, but with all the additions it was pretty clear it would be two hours.

‘So we had a conversation with the BBC and the decision was to split it into two episodes.’

Kate gets a new DCI… and Ted is all but MIA! JAN MOIR’s view from the sofa as Line of Duty makes its hotly anticipated return to our screens

Rating:

Houl yer whisht!’ orders Superintendent Hastings, his quaint way of asking subordinates for silence.

With those three words, two big surprises and one tragic death already in the body bag, Line Of Duty roared back into action last night, jingling with jargon, bristling with the usual bells and whistles, and with tension tighter than one of Steve’s snazzy waistcoats.

Despite all best efforts in five previous series it soon became clear that the Organised Crime Group (OCG) is still flourishing and that the identity of H, the last high-ranking officer who works with them, remains a mystery.

Despite all best efforts in five previous series it soon became clear that the Organised Crime Group (OCG) is still flourishing and that the identity of H

Who can it be? And for how long can they keep us mired in this tortuous, H-bomb guessing game?

The first thing you need to know is that there have been changes at AC-12, the Anti-Corruption Unit headed by Supt Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) alongside key team members DI Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) and DS Steve Arnott (Martin Compston).

Steve is so bored investigating lowly plod expenses claims that he has grown a beard, while Kate has grown wings and moved to the MIT (Murder Investigation Team) over at Hillside Lane station, where her boss is new character DCI Joanne Davidson, played by Kelly MacDonald.

Joanne is the kind of policewoman who, at critical moments, wears her hair in a bun and keeps a telescope in her pocket.

‘Is the word ma’am not in your vocabulary?’ she barks at a CHIS (Covert Human Intelligence Source) handler who has clumsily lost his CHIS.

Davidson is the SIO (Senior Investigating Officer) on Operation Lighthouse, concerning the murder of journalist Gail Vella by person or persons unknown.

Joanne is the kind of policewoman who, at critical moments, wears her hair in a bun and keeps a telescope in her pocket

Can I say something, ma’am? It is almost certainly not Terry Boyle, whom you have already arrested and questioned. Everyone seems to be unaware that Terry has often been used as a fall guy by the OCG and even kept Jackie Laverty’s body in his freezer alongside some garden peas and fishfingers for about three entire series. I can’t get into that now. For the purposes of the tape, let’s move on.

Hastings is still tainted by the investigation into the £50,000 found resting in his hotel room in the last series. Look. This is not Ted’s first rodeo.

He accepted the disciplinary action and surely the matter is now closed. Or is it?

Deputy Chief Constable Andrea Wise, also sporting a Critical Bun, pursed her sour plum lips and made sure Hastings was not invited to a top brass meeting in the Conference Room.

Something good must have been going on, probably involving tea and pink wafer biscuits, because he was crushed like a grape at the rejection.

‘Best keep your head down Ted,’ she sniffed.

The spectre of H floats above them both like a fog, but in reality, it could be anyone. It could even be Kate, who has tried to escape AC-12, but could find herself being dragged back in, like Al Pacino in The Godfather.

When suspicions start to swirl around Davidson, Steve attempts to recruit Kate back into the fold. ‘We can keep it on the DL only if we have a CHIS inside MIT,’ is how he put it.

‘Either I am accused of being a traitor, or become one to avoid being accused,’ she replied, neatly summing up the ethical dilemma than now engulfs her. Or does it? In Line Of Duty, nothing and no one is ever quite what they seem.

From the get go, the opening episode of the sixth series was a dizzying stampede of masked police thundering about like heavily armed bison, forensic officers in crime scene suits with goggles, raiders in balaclavas and senior officers shouting at each other from opposite ends of the incident room or the car park.

‘The super isn’t buying the intel!’ bawled one. ‘What am I going to tell the chief?’ hollered another.

You can see how they got around Covid restrictions when filming, so very clever of them. All that was missing was Ted in a Norman helmet and chain mail, telling anyone who would listen that it was ‘Hastings, like the battle’.

How marvellous to be back with the Central Police force in this blighted, undesignated town somewhere in the UK.

Hastings is still tainted by the investigation into the £50,000 found resting in his hotel room in the last series. Look. This is not Ted’s first rodeo.

Just be glad you don’t live there, fella. For here, the mean streets are absolutely saturated in crime. Corruption and lawbreaking abound in the grim housing estates, on the rain swept streets, even inside the police force itself.

The action in this first episode was dominated by Davidson, who has mastered the art of the Line Of Duty ambiguous, middle distance stare – and also speaks more jargon-ese than everyone else put together.

She wants replacement AFOs (Authorised Firearms Officers), she wants an urgent SITREP (Situation Report) and she really wants to GAL (Get A Life).

Fast paced and exciting, this was a triumphant return for Line Of Duty, still earning its stripes after all these years.

If I have one criticism, it is that there was SNET (Simply Not Enough Ted) this week. Nestled inside his polycotton shirt and office lanyard, our hero barely got a word in, an overlooked wee currant among all those women in buns.

There was only time for him to lightly patronise ‘wee Chloe’ in the office, ask Steve if he was waiting for a ‘puff of white smoke’ and peer worriedly through the frosted panes in his window.

Mother of God, can Ted really be H? I’m afraid it’s time to HYW (Houl Yer Whisht) until next week.

LINE OF DUTY: WHO IS THE FOURTH ‘H’?

Line Of Duty creator Jed Mercurio excited fans when he shared the first clue about the plot of season six to Twitter.

Uploading a snap of a packet of the Australian chocolate biscuits TimTams with the caption ‘#LineofDuty Series 6 Plot Clue No. 1’, fans began to ferociously speculate as to what it might mean.

But one plot point hanging over the next season of the show is about the identity of the ominous ‘H’.

While the mystery was somewhat answered in the season five finale, it was also revealed that there are FOUR people pertaining to be ‘H’, with the final one still unknown.

So who could it be?

Patricia Carmichael (Anna Maxwell Martin)

She was one of season five’s stand-out characters, swooping in towards the end of the series to interrogate Ted Hastings – highly suspected to be ‘H’ at the time.

And while she simply seemed to be excellent at her job – and hellbent on uncovering the corruption within the department – could it be that Patricia Carmichael was SO keen to pin the blame on Ted to take the focus away from herself.

Could SHE be the fourth ‘H’?

Her position of power and respect, along with her unnaturally steely and cut-throat demeanor, could well point to this.

Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar)

Ted Hastings was pinpointed by viewers of the show, as well as the characters on the show, to be a candidate for ‘H’.

But it seemed he was exonerated by the end of season five, allowed to walk free.

But could be potentially be triple-crossing us all? Could he in fact STILL be the potential fourth ‘H’.

The biggest issue with this theory is that Gill Biggeloe – one of the three revealed to be ‘H’ – was so against him. Surely she wouldn’t be working to deter him if they were in league?

UNLESS, she doesn’t KNOW he is the fourth ‘H’?

DCC Andrea Wise (Elizabeth Rider)

Detective Chief Constable Andrea Wise was new to the show in season five and is another high-powered contender for ‘H’.

She has been constantly interfering when it has come to supporting AC-12’s investigations, removing them from the investigation into Operation Pear Tree. She also instigated the Ted Hastings investigation.

She is also keen to cover up police corruption, despite announcing at the end of season five: ‘This constabulary will work tirelessly to root out rotten apples in its ranks.’

PCC Rohan Sindwhani (Ace Bhatti)

Police and Crime Commissioner Rohan Sindwhani demanded to be ‘in on’ a meeting between Andrea Wise and Ted Hastings. This might be a small clue but any clue could be valid at this point.

Any shady behavior suggests ‘H’ is at play, and so Rohan could indeed be culpable.

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