As the sixth series of Jed Mercurio’s explosive thriller reaches its climax, have we have been looking for the mysterious fourth man in the wrong place?
The front page of the Sun on 27 April had the headline “Lying of Duty” stamped across a mocked-up case file from AC-12, the police anti-corruption unit featured in BBC One’s Line of Duty. The conceit is that Adrian Dunbar’s Ch Supt Ted Hastings, scourge of “bent coppers” in the show, should investigate multiple allegations of impropriety against Boris Johnson.
This joke escalates a metaphor introduced by Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions on 14 April, when the Labour leader suggested Hastings could be hired to look at David Cameron’s lobbying of Johnson’s government on behalf of the finance company Greensill.
