Never mind the Eastfield Depot robbery, the dead bent copper, the brothel raid, the harvested DNA, the bloody shoot-out and the diversionary car crash caused by smearing oil on the road. (Was it virgin? Only on the ridiculous.)
By far the most sensational event in Sunday night's Line Of Duty (BBC1) was that it ended with Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) taking police legal counsel Gill Biggeloe (Polly Walker) back to his hotel. Old Testament Ted with a woman in his bed? Holy pillars of salt!
Poor Ted now lives in reduced circumstances, in a Travelodge room with a broken toilet and a photograph of his beloved wife on the bedside table. His hot date overlooked the lack of romance and the drabness.
Superintendent Ted Hastings, played by Adrian Dunbar, is an unlikely modern hero - and an even more unlikely sex symbol - but there is no doubting his appeal
'I'm just going to use your bathroom,' purred Gill, inching her Jessica Rabbit curves past the trouser press and into the en suite to take advantage of the free toiletries and complimentary mints included in the room rate.
Yet, before she could return, violent happenings elsewhere suggested a swift end to any hanky panky that our darling Ted would assuredly live to regret. Heaven knows what is going to happen next.
While Line of Duty is quickly becoming the hit drama of the year so far, there is no doubt about who is the shining, true blue star of the show.
DI Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) and DS Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) are admirable sidekicks who carry out their duties to the letter of the law. However, it is their boss, Hastings, whom millions of fans love the most.
In an unlikely twist, Ted Hasting's took legal counsel Gill Biggeloe (Polly Walker) back to his hotel - but violent happenings elsewhere suggested a swift end to any hanky panky
SuperTed is an unlikely modern hero — and an even more unlikely sex symbol — but there is no doubting his appeal. When he threatened to handcuff a suspect to a chair in the finale of the last series, huge numbers of women took to social media to exclaim that if darling Ted was determined to go around handcuffing people to bits of furniture, then he could most certainly count on them to be willing accomplices.
Ladies, please!
What do they see in the middle-aged, no-nonsense copper whose granite personality, craggy profile and humourless charm come wrapped up in a police blouson and a dinosaur dose of old-fashioned sexism?
He's certainly proof that substance and a commanding air can be so much sexier than mere good looks. And while Hastings may have just promoted Fleming, he still sees her in fond but reactionary terms.
'She's a great wee girl doing a bang-up job,' is how he puts her career trajectory to date. Feminists, look away now.
Yet women — and men — still adore him. Perhaps it is because in these uncertain times he represents the trustworthy good guy and the kind of urgent authority that seems so absent from blundering public life?
Certainly for over 20 episodes in four previous tv series, Hastings has always been the true north on the
