Police corruption, universal and entertaining

The second season of the show features a new police corruption story told over six one-hour episodes. The series opened explosively with the ambush of a police convoy in which three police officers are killed and a protected witness is seriously injured. The sole surviving police officer is Detective Inspector Lindsay Denton (Keeley Hawes) – and she becomes the prime suspect for the killings.

Line of Duty is part of a string of shows following corrupt cops on TV right now – and there is one positive message stemming from these shows: Crime does not pay. Corrupt cops seem to be popular on SA TV screens with Uziko, 7de Laan, Heist and the lauded film iNumber Number following the “corrupt cop” mode of storytelling.

If you love a whodunnit, make sure to catch Line of Duty the next few weeks to see that corrupt cops are a universal problem.

Keeley Hawes who plays Detective Lindsay Denton shared some insight into the new drama show.
Lindsay Denton is a new character for this series of Line of Duty; can you tell us a bit about her?

At first when I went and met Jed and Douglas the director, they weren’t too sure whether Lindsay would be on the dark side or a not, which was so fascinating for me. I was sent the script and I just sat there and read them one after another in one sitting. I still had no idea and I begged them to tell me – regardless of whether I got the part I just needed to know! They told me that they hadn’t decided so it was quite incredible to go in and play the scenes completely not knowing whether I was guilty or otherwise.

I’ve never had to do anything like this before so it was really an attraction and was a whole package. I accidently came across the first series when I was just flicking through the channels and ended up watching a couple of episodes of that last year and thinking it was brilliant. It’s an ongoing series so there is always going to be a new member of the gang. Everyone in the cast is so brilliant.

We are introduced to her in the first episode when there is a big ambush, can you tell us how the audience will be introduced to her in the series opener?

Lindsay opens the scene by picking up a call to provide immediate assistance to a protected witness and this is the first time we meet her. She goes into this situation
that results in an ambush and she gets involved in something she maybe doesn’t want to be involved in!

Do you think the viewers will like her?

I hope so. She’s not a bad person. We don’t ever find out that much about her personally, we don’t ever see her having a great time in her life or at a high point. It’s
difficult to know what there is to like but we are hopefully gunning for her to get out of the situation that she’s in and understand the reasons why she is in
it.

How does Lindsay interact with Kate and Steve? How were they first introduced?

She was first introduced to them when Kate is planted in her office. She soon works out that Kate’s a plant – Lindsay is quite bright and has been a police officer for a long time and can read the signs. She knows Kate cannot be trusted. As for Steve, she starts to use him a bit for her own devices but none of them trust each other at all – I don’t think and she isn’t in a position to be trusting people.