Line of Duty, episode 5, review: Anna Maxwell Martin steals show in battle of Hastings
Oh Ted. Ted, Ted, Ted! What in the name of all your favourite biblical figures has got into you? As Line of Duty(BBC One) gallops to the tape, the nation’s most trusted senior hottie is toying with our affections. Homeless, broke and going full rogue, Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) intensified his mission to reel in H, but succeeded only in reeling in himself. Which may be the same thing.
The final indignity? Facing a frosty triptych of Amazonian interrogators. Quite the irony for an officer with a rep for everyday sexism. His thrusting younger nemesis Deputy Chief Superintendent Patricia Carmichael, brought in from AC-3, was played with furniture-chewing glee by Anna Maxwell Martin, dispensing smug half-smiles and nannyish put-downs. As her ice-blue peepers lasered into him he could barely unhood his left eyelid.
While we’re on eyes, has anyone seen Lisa McQueen (Rochenda Sandall) blink yet? She is only the latest woman to join the forces ranged against Hastings. It’s looking awfully like a #MeToo moment for the old fella. He has been thrown off the case by DCC Andrea Wise (Elizabeth Rider), one half of a pincer movement with PC Tatleen Sohota, played with untiring pluck by Taj Atwal in a largely thankless info-dumping role.
Meanwhile, the ghosts of Lindsay Denton and Jackie Laverty were exhumed to haunt him. Wicked witch Gill Biggeloe (Polly Walker) hissed about “a non-exclusive relationship with the truth” as the camera lurked sinisterly on her shoulder. And then there was DI Fleming (Vicky McClure), sporting an array of baffled looks until she could take it no more and went over Hastings’s head. Et tu, Kate?Dunbar, veering from hollow braggadocio to caged-lion scowls, pulled out all the stops as Hastings tried to wriggle through a maze of his own making (with some help from Heath Robinson).
As a blistering workplace drama, Line of Duty keeps delivering. Its flirtation with its main characters’ private lives exhibits less finesse. Kate’s work-life balance issues are a half-glimpsed afterthought, while D S Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) picked the weirdest moment to resume horizontal relations with his shifty ex DS Sam Railston (Aiysha Hart). Unless, of course, he too was going undercover.