Line of Duty 6 season finale – the reviews, spoilers ahead!
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
The reviews are in for the series 6 finale of popular BBC drama Line of Duty – and opinions are very much mixed.
The sixth series came to a close on Sunday night and scored massive ratings for the BBC – a whopping 11 million people (a record for the show) tuned in for the series finale.
Line of Duty 6 finale – what happened?
The final episode of the series saw the unveiling of the criminal mastermind H as DCI Ian Buckells. The future of the anti-corruption unit AC-12 was left up in the air, and some fans were disappointed.
The Metro said Line of Duty’s “frustrating” series 6 ended in a “whimper”.
“Its usual complexity seemed to go out of the window during the pivotal interrogation scene with Ian Buckells (Nigel Boyle), which saw him unmasked as the Fourth Man [also known as H],” he wrote in his three-star review.
There were “flashes of [the show’s] usual brilliance” in the finale, he said, but it “left plenty of questions, with narrative arcs tossed aside with abandon”.
“Sunday’s installment felt like an ending of sorts, despite the fact there may well be more episodes in future,” he said.
“But will anyone be talking about the Line of Duty series six finale in a decade’s time, or even remember how the dullest cop in the service was revealed as the big bad?”
In a three-star review, for the Guardian, Lucy Mangan said the unveiling of H as evidence that series six of Line of Duty has “superficially at least, delivered”.
But she still suspects that the big reveal, for many, will have been an anti-climax. And, looking back on the series as a whole, Mangan wanted more.
There were plot holes throughout the season, she wrote, adding that the show had lost key elements along the way – including the connection between Kate and Steve.
“It was all fine,” she wrote. “But, oh my, you should have seen it when it was good.”
In the New Statesman, Rachel Cooke’s review ended with a similar thought.
“It was, for a while, the greatest cop show ever made – and then, suddenly, it wasn’t any more,” she wrote. “Whimpers all round. Especially from me.”
The Times’ Ben Dowell gave the finale four out of five stars – saying it gave viewers “a greatest hits compilation: a prison van interception, pistols drawn, plus a faint whiff of political parable”.
While he admitted the reveal of H as Buckell’s was “hugely disappointing on one level”, he argued, “at least this felt plausible”.
“Of course, it was staring us in the face all along,” he wrote. “We knew H couldn’t spell, and it was this lapse which ‘definitely’ nailed him, thanks largely to a forensic search of police records that AC-12 could have done ten episodes ago.
“We wouldn’t have had as much fun, though.”
Line of Duty fans ‘disappointed at final episode
However, fans on Twitter seemed mostly disappointed.
Adrian Dunbar on seeing the script for the final episode….#LineofDutyFinale #lineofduty #lineofduty6 pic.twitter.com/1NGRwAOImg
— Karl Cunliffe (@KDCunliffe) May 2, 2021
Think we can all agree that was a bit disappointing for an ending, my face currently like this. But remember
Ted is not corrupt
Ted didn't die #LineOfDuty #LineofDuty6 #Hastings #ObsessedWithLineOfDuty #LineofDutyFinale pic.twitter.com/ldBiRytWLQ— John-Barry (@JohnBWaldron) May 2, 2021
https://twitter.com/Delboy1978/status/1388965780369313793
Hastings, Arnott and Fleming are thinking exactly the same as ten million of us.#LineofDutyFinale #lineofduty6 #lineofduty pic.twitter.com/F25JWuIgZa
— Karl Cunliffe (@KDCunliffe) May 2, 2021
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