Season five of Line of Duty will be premiering on BBC One tomorrow (Sunday, March 31) at 9pm and airing weekly over the course of six weeks. The BBC drama was last on our screens back in 2017 as viewers were struck hard with some huge revelations. The series has been off screens for a while, so here’s our recap of the last series of Line of Duty.
What happened in Line of Duty season 4?
Roz Huntley
Each season has a chief antagonist and season four was no different with Roz Huntley (played by Thandie Newton) under suspicion.
Huntley’s own colleague and forensics officer Tim Ifield (Jason Watkins) reported her to AC-12 for suppressing evidence and sending down innocent man Michael Farmer (Scott Reid).
AC-12 then delved deep into the case as they tried to establish whether Huntley was corrupt and trying to cover up evidence.
Things took another turn after Ifield went missing and the heat was really on Huntley – by the end we found out she’d accidentally killed him during a scuffle between the pair.
Huntley eventually went down for her crimes after confessing all and got 10 years behind bars.
She had initially tried to frame her poor unwitting husband Nick (Lee Ingleby) and set him up to be Balaclava Man before all was revealed in the finale.
Nick was freed and remained married to Roz despite her attempts to avoid jail and have him convicted of murder.
Balaclava Man
Throughout the course of the season, there was the mystery of Balaclava Man or the Balaclava Men, who were constantly caught on CCTV doing some dodgy dealing.
One of the Balaclava Men tried to kill Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) after throwing him over the edge of a flight of stairs and potentially to his death.
Luckily, Steve survived although he ended up in a wheelchair as he slowly recovered and eventually managed to walk again.
Steve correctly theorised that the Balaclava Men were part of a wider criminal conspiracy linked to the police and crooked cops.
Frustratingly, no one was specifically identified as being Balaclava Man or one of the conspirators involved in the criminal activity.
But Maneet Bindra (Maya Sondhi) was revealed to be a mole, who was being blackmailed to leak information from AC-12 investigations.
Season five will now look into this further and how they could be connected to the mysterious H.
H
Perhaps the biggest mystery of the show, which has been the central thread running through the course of Line of Duty, is the conundrum that is H.
Since season one, there’s been one person pulling the strings with the help of the Caddy, who was revealed to be Dan “Dot” Cottan (Craig Parkinson) in season three.
Season four saw Huntley also asking who H was, suggesting that she too had been set up for a fall by this shadowy figure.
H was revealed to be the criminal mastermind working inside the police force and behind the inherent corruption inside.
AC-12 hypothesised H was a high-level member of the force, leading the suspicion to fall on the head of the unit Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar).
Line of Duty creator Jed Mercurio has already confirmed the new series will be exploring Hastings’ past and perhaps finding out whether he could be H.
Line of Duty season 5 starts on BBC One tomorrow at 9pm
