ITS been a long time since the last Line of Duty. Covid-19 halted production from March to September last year, meaning theres been a two-year gap between season five and season six, which finally hit BBC1 last night.
However time hasnt stood still in the fictional Line of Duty universe while weve been out here in the real one, waiting impatiently.
Its 18 months on from the shock news discovered in a Morse code message tapped out by the fingers of the dying DI Matthew Dot Cottan all the way back in season three that there wasnt just one corrupt copper codenamed H in cahoots with the organised criminal gang (OCG), but four of them.
As we rejoin the AC-12 team, none of them is in a good place. Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar), whos been in reduced financial circumstances for years, is now suffering reduced career circumstances. While he was vindicated in season five, questions still loom.
What was really on the laptop he had destroyed: embarrassing porn, as he claimed, or something incriminating? What was the true nature of his relationship with murdered undercover cop John Corbetts mother back when he was an RUC man in Belfast?
Ted, who conceivably could still be the fourth H, remains in charge of AC-12, just about, but hes lost his senior colleagues trust and his authority is being undermined. He turns up for a high-level meeting and discovers he has been excluded.
Sorry, Ted, youre not on the list this time, says a superior, explaining why he didnt receive an email about it and intimating some people on the force believe hes lucky to still have a job.
Teds protégé Steve Arnott (Martin Compston), the one who spotted Dot Cottans message hiding in plain sight while re-examining the old camera-phone footage, is disillusioned and disheveled, his normally immaculately trimmed beard looking bushy and unkempt.
Ive reached the end of the line in anti-corruption, he tells on/off girlfriend Nicola Rogerson (Christina Chong). Im bored. I need a new challenge.
Steves never been quite the same since being savagely beaten and thrown down several flights of stairs by one of the Balaclava Men in season four.
His excessive use of painkillers appears to have turned into a full-blown addiction. His kitchen cupboard groans with ibuprofen and codeine tablets, bought from multiple pharmacies in the same evening. He swallows fistfuls of them, washed down with Corona beer (a cheeky in-joke by writer Jed Mercurio?).
If Steve is itchy to get out of AC-12, the biggest surprise is that Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) has already made the break. Shes moved on to the murder investigation team or in the acronym-heavy world of Line of Duty, the MIT something thats left Ted feeling betrayed.
Its Kates new job that provides the link to this seasons AC-12 quarry: her boss, the unreadable DCI Joanne Davidson (Kelly Macdonald), whos heading the investigation into the murder of a high-profile journalist.
While leading a heavily armed convoy to arrest a chief suspect in the case, Davidson somehow notices a robbery in progress down a side street. Given the speed at which the convoy is travelling, this is a near-superhuman feat.
Rather than just calling it in and carrying on with the operation in hand, Davidson bizarrely diverts the whole team to foil the raid, resulting in one raider being shot dead.
After the other three raiders are unmasked (theyre wearing balaclavas, inevitably), theyre discovered to be terrified teenagers; stooges with no criminal records who have been manipulated by the OCG.
Valuable time is wasted. When Davidsons team finally show up, the supposed suspect they encounter is none other than Terry Boyle (Tommy Jessop), the young man with Downs syndrome whose flat the crime syndicate previously used for criminal purposes.
When word of Davidsons suspicious behaviour reaches AC-12, Ted is reluctant to make contact with Kate, who would be the obvious insider in an investigation, so Steve takes it upon himself to covertly get the wheels turning.
While lacking the gut-punch shocks of some Line of Duty openers (Jessica Raine being thrown from a window in season two, for instance), this was a compelling start that spun a satisfyingly tangled web to be unpicked in the remaining six episodes.