before news of allegations against its star, Noel Clarke, broke, it annoyed me a little. Mainly because of chances wasted. We’ve had the thrills of the lengthy interview technique, evinced in
Criminal but most superbly in
Line of Duty; we’ve had the forensic anthropologists celebrated in
Silent Witness: even recently (in
Intruder), the lowly family liaison officer. Now was surely the time for those stout souls of 24-hour surveillance teams to be given their midnight in the sun.
And yet Clarke’s DC Martin Young made so many mistakes in his Manchester stakeout flat, directly opposite the target row of grand houses. He let his tripoded supercamera run out of power at a crucial moment, durr. He abandoned his post for a trip to hospital. He slept with the single mother in the stakeout flat. A colleague would later leave the police walkie-talkie crackling alone in a room with the chief suspect. Later still, Martin would actually manage to talk a crucial witness