Line of Duty (BBC/Hulu)

[RainDog]

The second season of Line of Duty will begin in the near future. If you haven't seen the first season, it's available to view on Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/watch/388608

In the first season, a detective (DCI Gates/Lennie James) with a great record is targeted by his superintendent (Adrian Dunbar) as "too good to be true." There is, no doubt, some racism at play as the Superintendent looks for ways to discredit the detective.

Gates is an excellent cop - until issues from his personal life get mixed up with his professional one and he makes a bad decision that haunts him - and causes him to try to cover his tracks.

In the meantime, Steve Arnott refuses to lie about the way events occurred in a shoot out. He's transferred to internal investigations just as Dunbar's character decides to go after Gates.

Gates adds Detective Kate Fleming to his unit to create more diversity. When the unit investigates a drug ring, Fleming, Gates and Arnott all find their lives are irrevocably changed.

One thing I loved about this series when I watched it was the end - it has to do with Fleming and depictions of females in fiction.

(oh, and no worries about me having a fever dream about this one - already saw it...lol)

[RainDog]

1. Line of Duty Season 2 (no spoilers)

The first season of Line of Duty was about Tony Gates (Lennie James) and the way his stellar record gets compromised after he tries to cover up for someone else's actions.

It's also about a lot of other things - bureaucracy, corruption, crazy things people do because of love or lust, clashes of loyalty - and all with a "cliffhanger" end to each episode.

The second season is about a detective who is blamed for losing someone in witness protection after a transfer gets hijacked by people who want the witness to be dead. And it's about all the other things in the second graph here.

DI Lindsey Denton says people have underestimated her all her life. It's great to see this happen, and to wonder if she really did what others stated, or has planted her own traps for others. The actor who portrays Denton does a great, great job of maintaining ambivalence about the truth of her actions. The final episode tries to tell a lot of story in a small space - but it seems the ending is also part of a set up for a third season - characters from this story still have lives to live.

These two seasons are really strong - great work if you like stories like The Shield or The Wire - each season is a contained story - but a much more interesting watch if you follow the series chronologically because recurring characters in each season do have developing stories.

Apparently the BBC will do a third series. Yeah.