LINE OF DUTY, BBC1, 9pm
I FEAR this once-great drama might be losing it. I watched this week’s episode filled with nagging questions and baulked at the increasingly implausible aspects of the story.
When another great shocking moment arose I clasped my hand over my mouth and started shouting “no way!” at my dog.
However, as happened after the first episode’s chainsaw moment, I quickly recovered from the shock and began thinking it was perhaps just a bit daft … Is this what happens when a show gets moved to BBC1? Do the shocks and twists need to be pumped up to the max at the expense of everything else?
In the less frantic moments, the wound on Roz’s wrist gets ever more foul and painful, acting as a clumsy symbol for her troubles.
She hides in the bathroom to anxiously tend it but outside she is as calm as ever, even when wee angry Arnott gets closer to the root of the evil as he begins questioning her nervous husband.
SPYING ON THE ROYALS, C4, 8pm
THE affair between Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson has always been portrayed as a great story with the man giving up his kingdom for love.
However, when you scratch below the surface you find real unpleasantness.
Not only did their relationship lead to a constitutional crisis, there was deep hatred between Wallis Simpson and the woman who became sister-in-law, the Queen Mother.
There were photographs of the couple greeting Hitler, and some argue Wallis grew weary of Edward’s suffocating affection but things had gone too far for her to suddenly back out.
It’s an endlessly fascinating story once you cut the silly “love” out of it.
This series details government suspicions that the romantic pair were perhaps working against British interests.
Sent into unofficial exile in France, Portugal and the Bahamas, they were kept under surveillance by both the British and the Americans as fears grew that Wallis was in communication with the Nazi leadership.
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