Advertisement

Trigger Point, finale, review: who knew defusing bombs could be so boring?

Vicky McClure as Lana Washington in Trigger Point - ITV/Matt Frost
Vicky McClure as Lana Washington in Trigger Point - ITV/Matt Frost

Take hard cover! Actually, don’t bother. Explosive thriller Trigger Point (ITV) ended not with a bang but with several snips by wire-cutters and a sizeable sigh of relief. The sixth and final episode wasn’t entirely a damp squib but it did fizzle like a flood-damaged firework.

As this finale began, Met Police bomb disposal officer Lana Washington (Vicky McClure) – top-knot on and helmet off, as per usual – was dealing with an elaborate gas-pipe device which threatened to flatten an entire residential street. Lana’s “expo” team and a WALL-E lookalike robot efficiently did their thing, while various bigwigs demanded a “sitrep”.

With the best part of an hour still to go, there had to be one last bomb alert. Shadowy terrorist group The Crusaders led police on a merry dance before their ultimate target became clear: the announcement of by-election results at a south London town hall. When bomb data analyst Sonya (Kerry Godliman) linked their trademark explosive to a top secret military operation in Afghanistan, everything pointed to an ex-squaddie with a grudge.

Viewers’ suspicions had been steadily focusing on Lana’s love interest, Karl Maguire (Warren Brown), who kept turning up like a bad penny – usually playing pool or proffering a takeaway cup of coffee. There seemed little reason for Karl to exist if not to betray our heroine. All too predictably, so it came to pass.

First clingy Karl turned up at a police cordon with, you guessed it, a cup of takeaway coffee. Presumably a pool table was too heavy to carry. By the time he strolled casually into the town hall on a hot summer’s day with his jacket buttoned up, you just knew there was something lurking beneath. No, not a Nespresso machine. It was a suicide belt, operated with a dead man’s switch. Or “DMS”, in this acronym-stuffed drama.

Mark Stanley as DCI Thom Youngblood in Trigger Point - ITV
Mark Stanley as DCI Thom Youngblood in Trigger Point - ITV

Karl was seeking payback for Operation Dynamo, a convoy ambush near Kandahar in 2009 which killed seven Allied troops but had been hushed up as a road traffic accident. The by-election’s victorious Labour MP just happened to have been the chair of a Defence Select Committee which shut down the inquiry.

Did this explanation, spouted by Karl like a Scooby Doo villain, hang together? Only by the skin of its fingertips. A disillusioned soldier seeking to expose a botched mission was at least an intriguingly knotty premise. What made less sense was why he set up a far-right terrorist cell to get his message across. Bombing minorities, killing policemen and instilling fear didn’t seem the obvious way to achieve justice for his comrades’ families. The conspiracy got lost amid shock tactics.

Mysterious codes “66 11 42” and “1912” kept cropping up. These turned out to be atomic numbers from the periodic table, spelling out Dy-Na-Mo and K-Mg (shorthand for Karl Maguire) respectively. A tenuous, tricksy solution to rival those retrofitted Morse code “Dots” in sister show Line of Duty.

At least the final showdown was tense. Lana lunged for the DMS. A sniper took out Karl. Job done, although it was baffling how he got a suicide vest into a heavily guarded building, let alone was able to saunter onstage wearing it. The sudden repositioning of Lana’s colleague John Hudson (Kris Hitchen) from arch villain to framed patsy didn’t convince either. This resolution felt rushed and riddled with plot holes.

A shame, because the series started strongly. The opening instalment thrummed with action and pulled off an effective twist when Lana’s partner-in-detonation Joel Nutkins (Adrian Lester) was blown to smithereens before the credits rolled. There have been pulsating sequences since, notably a sniper attack and booby-trapped car. Between the set pieces, though, the writing was far too patchy.

Nabil Elouahabi as Hass Ahmed in Trigger Point - ITV
Nabil Elouahabi as Hass Ahmed in Trigger Point - ITV

Exposition was delivered via repetitively verbose briefings. Dialogue was unnaturally wooden. Not one but two characters said here: “I can’t believe everything that’s happened.” You could almost hear the cries from sofas nationwide: “Neither can we.”

It had indeed been a bad few weeks at the office for Lana. She lost her best mate and her brother at the hands of her lover, then nearly got blown up by him too. She was understandably traumatised but nothing a trip to the pub couldn’t fix. That, at least, was pleasingly British.

McClure gave a typically powerful performance but was left to do all the heavy lifting alone, a burden which resulted in last week’s cringeworthy drunken dancing scene. She and Godliman were head and shoulders above the rest of the cast, who were given little to work with. Their characters were cardboard cut-outs by comparison.

Trigger Point was overseen by Line of Duty supremo Jed Mercurio. His fingerprints were all over it, from the bent coppers to the copious use of “mate”. Yet whereas Line of Duty constructs an immersive, convincing fictional world, Trigger Point couldn’t sustain its quality and lapsed into self-parody. Jargon and shouting proved no substitute for a coherent plot and smart script.

Mercurio has confirmed that Trigger Point was “set up to be a returning series”. But when it does return – series two has already been commissioned – it needs sharper writing and a stronger ensemble. Besides, if both Mercurio and McClure are involved, can we politely suggest prioritising another series of Line of Duty instead? Then we truly would be sucking diesel.