Line of Duty is back! Oh, hang on. My mistake. Yes, Trigger Point (ITV) opens urgently with Vicky McClure speeding along in a police convoy, a voice on the radio asking: “Do we have confirmation of target?” and spouting mysterious jargon. But despite the identikit casting and Jed Mercurio as executive producer, this turns out to be a different show.
Within minutes, it has shaken off the Line of Duty comparison. McClure’s character, Lana Walsh, isn’t a million miles away from DI Kate Fleming in terms of her straight-talking approach, but now she’s in the bomb squad, paired up with Adrian Lester as fellow “expo” (experienced bomb disposal operative) Joel Nutkins.
Why they have given him a name redolent of a squirrel and the late lamented Terry Nutkins, I don’t know, but let’s move on. The combination of Mercurio and bomb disposal has made my teeth itch ever since the finale of Bodyguard, in which the hero defused his own suicide vest after being allowed to go for a walk in it, flanked by police outriders. Thankfully, Trigger Point stays within the bounds of reality.
It isn’t written by Mercurio but by his mentee, debut screenwriter Daniel Brierley, who has done a sterling job. This is London, on a sweltering summer day. Walsh and Nutkins are called to reports of an IED in a tower block. Straight away, Walsh makes an error by going to switch on the wall light. It’s rigged up to some explosives.
There follows a sweaty scene in which Nut tries to find and defuse it, while Walsh tries to swallow her panic. Next, a great set piece in which a man emerges from a car boot, strapped into a suicide vest, and Walsh has to talk him down. As a first episode, it wasn’t really nerve-jangling.
Instead, the focus was on the easy relationship between Walsh and Nutkins, which rang true: no romantic subtext, just colleagues and friends who look out for one another, with plenty of gallows humour: “I love you too, mate, just not to bits.” But just when their banter and success on the job had lulled me into a false sense of security, the writers pulled the rug. It’s not often a TV scene shocks me so much that I yelp, but it happened here.
Trigger Point has its work cut out now, after such an arresting start. The plot will follow the search for the bombers, and an investigation into their motives, but neither of those are an expo’s job. If Brierley can successfully combine that storyline with Walsh’s work, then he will mark himself out as a promising talent.
