Protection is the best Line of Duty successor yet ...Middle East

It is less than half an hour into ITV’s newest crime drama Protection when someone utters the words “bent coppers” – but the Line of Duty similarities had been there long before that. Packed with internal politics, personal indiscretions and shocking violence, this is one of the best successors (and many have tried) to Jed Mecurio’s almost-definitely-returning BBC runaway hit.

Set in a witness protection unit, Protection provides a long overdue leading role for the magnificent Siobhan Finneran, scene-stealer of Happy Valley and Alma’s Not Normal. She is DI Liz Nyles, the officer in charge of looking after a family who are in hiding ahead of the father giving evidence at the high-profile trial of an organised crime boss (devastatingly, no one has yet used the acronym “OCG” but it can only be a matter of time).

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With Liz reassuring her nervous charges that they are almost over the finishing line and in sight of their new lives, along with her colleagues emphasising the extreme sensitivity of this particular case, all the signs of an impending disaster are there. Sure enough, the safe house is breached by a gang of masked gunmen who murder the parents as their terrified 12-year-old daughter Amy hides upstairs.

This in itself would make for a gripping drama, but Protection steps things up. Also present at the crime scene was DS Paul Brandice (Barry Ward of Bad Sisters), who was not working this case, should technically have had no knowledge of the safe house location and appears to have been armed with an unauthorised pistol. And to really complicate matters, he is also the married man with whom Liz has been having an affair.

As he’s rushed to hospital looking all kinds of dodgy, Liz is left facing what appears to be a mammoth security breach on her watch and not only the possibility of her affair being exposed, but that she was being played all along by – you guessed it – a bent copper.

Liz sets about conducting her own enquiries, implicating herself by attempting to keep Paul’s burner phone out of evidence, and discovering extremely suspicious surveillance photos of the safe house in the process.

The official investigation into the murders is headed up by Katherine Kelly’s dogged DCI Hannah Wheatley. Kelly doesn’t have a huge amount to do in the first episode other than be mightily annoyed over witness protection’s many protocols hindering her work, but the prospect of her and Finneran facing off – or hopefully working together – to get to the bottom of all this is a tantalising prospect.

The dialogue of the opener is a little exposition heavy and there are many crime drama clichés. Liz is juggling work with a tricky home life: she has a frosty relationship with her ex, isn’t present for her teenage daughter and is dealing with her ailing father’s dementia diagnosis. And it is a bit on the nose for a character to bring their work home in the form of a traumatised child who has just witnessed her parents’ murder. But then what’s the point of a TV detective without baggage?

As expected, Finneran is excellent as Liz, full of empathy for the people in her care and a stickler for the rules when it suits her but evidently willing to bend them when it doesn’t. And Ward brings a great slippery energy to Brandice, who ends the episode just about still alive and urging Nyles: “Don’t trust anyone”.

The witness protection unit operates on a need-to-know basis. All you need to know here is that Sunday nights are back in business when it comes to tense, twisty police thrillers.

‘Protection’ continues tomorrow at 9pm on ITV1

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