YMMV / Line of Duty

• Arc Fatigue: Season 5's apparently misleading foreshadowing that Hastings is H has led to this with the conspiracy.
• Ass Pull:
  • Hasting's past with the PIRA has shades of this.
  • Some viewers didn't like the idea that Detective Superintendent Ian Buckells is actually the criminal H. For them, it looked like it was an easy way out as the sixth series was trying to wrap everything up in case there's no interest to revive the show with another series.
  • In Season 4, why does Tim Ifield have sex with Hana Reznikova, and why is it relevant that she's a prostitute? We find out that Balaclava Man or Men kills prostitutes, but how could he or they have known that she was a prostitute when she just walked down the street after a night out?
  • Jimmy feeding the identity of Michael Farmer to Roz Huntley. While he is highly respected, what sense does it make for Roz to take him at his word so keenly? Why does she, if she's apparently not corrupt?
• Awesome Music: The ending theme by Carly Paradis.
• Complete Monster:
  • Tommy Hunter is a crime lord who runs a street gang that deals in drugs, prostitution, and murder. Tommy began his spree of misdeeds early on in his life, raping and impregnating his fifteen-year-old sister, and later forcing his daughter to join his league of corrupt police officers. Many years later, upon learning of rival drug dealers in his territory, Tommy has three of them tortured to death. After his money launderer, Jacquelyn Laverty, comes under investigation from the police, Tommy has her murdered and frames her boyfriend, DCI Tony Gates. Afterwards, Tommy blackmails Gates to work for him or else he'll deliver Laverty's body and the murder weapon to the police. When DS Steve Arnott starts to uncover Tommy's organization, Tommy forces Gates to lure him into a trap, where his men torture and nearly kill him. After Gates commits suicide and Tommy is exonerated of his crimes, Tommy continues with his schemes, using fifteen-year-old Carly Kirk as a prostitute so he'll be able to blackmail DCC Michael Dryden. When this fails and Carly runs away, Tommy orders his men to capture her so he can resume using her as a Sex Slave.
  • Ryan Pilkington is one of Tommy's dealers and serves as his mouthpiece. Showing to be just as sadistic as Tommy, Ryan and his acquaintances torture drug dealer Wesley Duke by cutting off all his fingers and lynching him. Ryan later assists in kidnapping and blackmailing Tony Gates, and personally tries to cut off Steve Arnott's fingers when Tommy's gang kidnaps him. Ryan returns several years later in series 5, still in league with the same gang. As a young adult, Ryan assists in gunning down three police officers; stealing from a convoy transporting assault weapons; killing Maneet Bindra; robbing a police depot filled with contraband; and helping the gang smuggle women in a sex trafficking ring. Once undercover officer John Corbett tries to help some of the women being smuggled, Ryan slashes Corbett's throat and lets him slowly bleed to death. While working undercover on Joanne Davidson's team, he murders another police officer, nearly drowns the mentally impaired Terry Boyle, and forces Joanne to lure Kate Fleming into a trap with the intent to kill her.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation:
  • Jackie Laverty's death shockingly occurs at the end of the second episode, and Tony Gates is blackmailed for his (accidental) involvement throughout Series 1. Many fans were extremely excited of the possibilities of what might happen if her body was discovered... which it is in Series 5. Nothing happens.
  • That, in Series 5, John had no more forceful reason to believe that Hastings was H aside from one message he received from the very untrustworthy Gill Biggeloe.
  • The revelation of Ian Buckells as "H."
• Fan-Preferred Couple: The show added Jo Davidson to the cast in season 6, partnered her professionally with long-term character Kate Fleming, and created a shipping explosion — before the season was even over more than two-thirds of the stories on Archive of Our Own were Jo/Kate, and continued even after the final episode of the season gave Jo a new girlfriend.
• Fountain of Memes: Ted Hastings.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Episode 3 of Series 4 ends with Steve Arnott getting beaten with a blunt weapon and thrown down a staircase. While the show is not shy about killing off police officers and civilians, most fans assumed he would survive his injuries anyway. He does.
• Memetic Mutation: Any of Superintendent Hastings' lines as mentioned in the variosu seasons.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Arnott being tortured in Series 1, with Pilkington almost chopping his fingers off.
  • The sadistic prison guards burning Denton's hands with boiling water.
  • John Corbett's death. The casual manner in which Ryan slits his throat.
  • Jimmy Lakewell's death, being garrotted by Lee Banks while a horrified Buckells is forced to watch.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: When the sixth season paired up new character Jo Davidson with long-term cast member Kate Fleming, fans quickly gave them the ship name "Flemson".
• Questionable Casting: Although most people agree he does an excellent job, this is more of a scripted questionable casting. In Series 5, Stephen Graham plays a man adopted from Northern Ireland, but does so with his (natural) very Liverpudlian accent, which makes the relevant twist feel more like an Ass Pull than it would've otherwise. He does put on a Belfast accent briefly (it was explained that he'd been adopted fairly young, and thus used a Liverpudlian accent later due to his adoptive parents living there).
• Seasonal Rot: Despite being a well-loved Detective Drama, the series has had multiple cases of this:
  • Season three is where the rot was really considered to have set in, with Pacing Problems and Filler episodes being a major criticism from the viewers. In general, the problems were largely down to "The Caddy" Story Arc, and Hate Sink Gill Biggeloe and Lindsay Denton, the Big Bad, was seen as a Filler Villain despite being in the well-liked Season 2.
  • Season four was largely seen as one Filler Story Arc, with unlikeable characters (although this show is set in a Crapsack World), including Jodie Taylor, who was divisive and seen as a Jerkass at best, and in general, the plotline was seen as average. Despite a good cast, it was seen as having too much episodes with filler and the pacing being poor.
  • Some viewers/fans even considered season five Fanon Discontinuity due to Filler and sluggish pacing, although Natalie Gavin's appearance as Sergeant Martina "Tina" Tranter (who's liked by the fandom) softened it a bit since she is a well-regarded actress in the UK who doesn't often get major roles, although it was a case of supporting a villainous character that she played. In general, some fans feel that it's been difficult to keep the momentum up in recent series.
• Signature Line: "Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey!" Superintendent Hastings' actor, Adrian Dunbar, has said he can't walk down the street without someone saying it to him (not that he minds).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Georgia Trotman. She's introduced in Series 2 as a potential new partner and/or Love Interest for Arnott. She could've served as a Foil to Kate, considering their personalities are vastly different from one another, and Georgia made no attempts at trying to copy Kate's methods, instead going about her investigations in her own way. Right when it seems like Arnott and Georgia are going to be working together for this series, she's thrown out of a hospital window to her death, and Arnott immediately goes back to working with Kate.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The show's high body count, its protagonists' tendencies to be Failure Heroes and the overall tone of unrelieved heavy seriousness suggests that Jed Mercurio wants to induce this.

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