‘Line of Duty proves that water-cooler television never really went away’

Pat Stacey

Jed Mercurio’s police-corruption drama has reaffirmed that there’s nothing quite like the thrill of a weekly series.

A scene from the penultimate episode of Line of Duty season six

April 29 2021 11:07 AM

ITV is showing the Rear Window-inspired thriller Viewpoint, starring the excellent Noel Clarke as a cop keeping the prime suspect in a woman’s disappearance under surveillance, on consecutive nights this week.

Once upon a time, the practice of stripping a drama series across the week was a rare occurrence. The 1977 miniseries Roots, one of the most revered dramas of all time and a landmark in American television, was shown on ABC over eight consecutive nights. Interestingly, this was a strategy born out of apprehension and not ambition. ABC head Fred Silverman was concerned about how white viewers would respond to a drama featuring an unprecedented number of black actors.

If Roots tanked in the ratings, at least the network would have cut its losses by cramming it into a week rather than stretching it over eight weeks. Silverman need not have worried. Roots drew a gigantic audience (the final episode was watched by more than 38 million Americans), won a string of awards, including nine Emmys and a Peabody, and became a global phenomenon. ABC had accidentally invented “water-cooler television”.

These days, stripping drama series is commonplace. The Virgin Media-Channel 5 psychological thriller Blood, for example, went out weekly here, but was stripped across six nights in the UK. Blood is a fine series, yet you’d hardly describe it — or for that matter Viewpoint — as water-cooler television.

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Ironically, the biggest piece of water-cooler television of 2021 so far is not something that’s been tailored to keep viewers glued to their screens five or six nights on the trot; it’s a series that’s going out the traditional — some might call it outmoded — way: one episode a week.

We’re talking about Line of Duty, of course. Well, what else would we be talking about when so many people on social media have been talking about little else for weeks now?

Traditional media is equally obsessed with Jed Mercurio’s police corruption drama. Line of Duty’s audience virtually doubled as soon as it switched from BBC Two to BBC One in 2017 and has been rising ever since. Last Sunday’s penultimate episode was watched by 11 million viewers in the UK — a new record for the series and the biggest audience for a BBC One drama since the Christmas Day episode of Doctor Who in 2008.

The consolidated figure will be a few million higher once those watching on catch-up on the BBC iPlayer are factored in. And let’s not forget the many Irish viewers riveted by the series (you can watch seasons one to five on the RTE Player, by the way).

The audience for next Sunday’s finale is likely to be even larger. If the trailer released by the BBC on Monday is playing fair, then the shadowy, corrupt police officer dubbed H, otherwise known as “the fourth man” (although it could be a fourth woman), will finally be unmasked.

Hang on, though: the days when an episode of a weekly drama was the subject of morning conversation in workplaces throughout the land were supposed to be behind us, weren’t they?

Nobody, we were told, wants to wait a week between episodes anymore — except maybe old farts, set in their old-fashioned ways. We want all the episodes now, so we can slurp up a whole season in one epic binge-watch. The age of water-cooler television, we were told, was dead... until suddenly it wasn’t.

The reality is that water-cooler television has never really gone away. It’s just that the water-cooler is now a digital one, and we don’t have to wait until the following morning to chew things over with our workmates. We can analyse, argue, speculate and theorise on Twitter as soon as an episode ends.

Game of Thrones, the biggest drama series of the 21st century, was water-cooler television. So was/is Westworld. So was another Jed Mercurio series, 2018’s Bodyguard, which sparked a buzz of excitement similar to the one we’re seeing now.

Line of Duty has reaffirmed that there’s nothing quite like the thrill of a weekly series. What’s more, the appeal defies the accursed demographics, which insist on putting viewers into boxes based on age.

The season finale of Line of Duty is on BBC One on Sunday (May 2) at 9pm