tv: line of duty
27 May 2019 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneWe watched all existing series of Line of Duty over the last few weeks. I enjoyed all of it, but the second to last one with Thandie Newton was really the apex of what the show had been doing, for me. It wasn't flawless, but I think it was the best executed series-length plot and the best-handled series-long guest star. The character and the writing of it took a lot of what worked about Keeley Hawes's character and put a new spin on it, in a more coherent and compelling package. And Thandie Newton's performance was fantastic. The show is very good and it doesn't have bad performances, but she was on another level.
I think I can see the logic of the most recent series deciding not to add a big name guest star to continue in the tradition of Hawes and Newton. Instead there are two significant series-long characters who share the focus a bit, which worked fine and made more space for Adrian Dunbar's character onscreen. They wouldn't have wanted the new plot to seem like a rehash of the beats of the last ones, and the balance and dynamic was successfully altered by what they did. It was exceedingly well acted, and the appeal of learning more about the main characters and their relationships with each other is undeniable, but overall it seemed like a step down to me.
And also the attempt at narrative 'IS he the bad guy or ISN'T he????' sleight of hand was pretty clumsy. It started off all right, but it was hokey by the second episode and quickly went beyond ridiculous into simply tiresome. Whoever it was who said the problem with the mystery genre is that the reader's task has gone from solving the mystery to solving the author was extremely correct, and that holds true for crime shows perhaps even more than many other kinds of mystery, but the hints were so blatant that long before the reveal I was yelling at the tv about it.
This show has had issues with that before - it's never followed the POV rule reliably, which is to say, it has always been open to being definitely in the head and point of view of a significant character while also concealing from the viewer some piece of information that said POV character knows (simply to create drama and keep the viewer guessing). This violation of POV is obviously not uncommon on tv or in literature, but I am not alone in regarding it as cheating: third person is one thing, but if I'm inside the character's head, I should be hearing what they hear, thinking what they think and knowing what they know; they're not keeping secrets from themselves, after all. And it's perfectly possible to follow a character and simply not go inside their head - but if we're seeing flashbacks and other editing devices that show us their thoughts, then we're in their head.
Violation of this rule isn't a deal-breaker for me, or anything; it's just a turnoff, like killer pov and victim pov in murder mysteries (which doesn't necessarily apply to crime shows, however, and Line of Duty does a good job including lawbreakers' povs usually).
I think I can see the logic of the most recent series deciding not to add a big name guest star to continue in the tradition of Hawes and Newton. Instead there are two significant series-long characters who share the focus a bit, which worked fine and made more space for Adrian Dunbar's character onscreen. They wouldn't have wanted the new plot to seem like a rehash of the beats of the last ones, and the balance and dynamic was successfully altered by what they did. It was exceedingly well acted, and the appeal of learning more about the main characters and their relationships with each other is undeniable, but overall it seemed like a step down to me.
And also the attempt at narrative 'IS he the bad guy or ISN'T he????' sleight of hand was pretty clumsy. It started off all right, but it was hokey by the second episode and quickly went beyond ridiculous into simply tiresome. Whoever it was who said the problem with the mystery genre is that the reader's task has gone from solving the mystery to solving the author was extremely correct, and that holds true for crime shows perhaps even more than many other kinds of mystery, but the hints were so blatant that long before the reveal I was yelling at the tv about it.
This show has had issues with that before - it's never followed the POV rule reliably, which is to say, it has always been open to being definitely in the head and point of view of a significant character while also concealing from the viewer some piece of information that said POV character knows (simply to create drama and keep the viewer guessing). This violation of POV is obviously not uncommon on tv or in literature, but I am not alone in regarding it as cheating: third person is one thing, but if I'm inside the character's head, I should be hearing what they hear, thinking what they think and knowing what they know; they're not keeping secrets from themselves, after all. And it's perfectly possible to follow a character and simply not go inside their head - but if we're seeing flashbacks and other editing devices that show us their thoughts, then we're in their head.
Violation of this rule isn't a deal-breaker for me, or anything; it's just a turnoff, like killer pov and victim pov in murder mysteries (which doesn't necessarily apply to crime shows, however, and Line of Duty does a good job including lawbreakers' povs usually).
