"Line of Duty" writer Jed Mercurio's new 6-part contemporary thriller has certainly been the most hyped (not least by the BBC itself) series of the year so far and apparently the most-watched too.

I have enjoyed all the "Lines Of Duty" so far and compared to this, I think they have been superior, not that I wasn't gripped all the way through, it's just that I was asked to make too many suspensions of belief and accept too many cliches along the way.

The writing was undeniably clever, with several intertwining plot strands and numerous twists and turns, the biggest of which, which cleverly looped the story back to the very start, was certainly unexpected to me, but even that on reflection asked the viewer to accept too much coincidence. Other weak plot lines were the playing up of D.S. Budd's sympathies with the disaffected Armed Forces protest group against Home Secretary Julia Montague (I'm not even aware of any great level of such discontent in Army vet circles), the requirement of not one but two targeted attempts on the Home Secretary's life and probably the dropping of the biggest cliche of all, the sexual hook-up between Budd and Montague, which took it too close to the Costner / Houston movie with which it almost shares its title.

However, once you accept all these and more, like the behind-the-scenes struggle for power between the secret service and the police or the slightest possibility of Britain succumbing to a political coup, best just to sit back and follow the fast paced action from its nerve-jangling start aboard a London commuter train to Budd's long walk to freedom in the streets of London attached to a suicide belt.

Production values were top-notch, with excellent ensemble acting, particularly by the lead players Richard Madden, Keeley Hawes and Gina McKee as the head of police, while the cast members playing the shadowy security ministers and staff and especially the key role of the jihadi wife were especially well chosen and played. I didn't like however the use of actual BBC reporting staff as themselves, no doubt for extra-added authenticity, but to me, it seems, again too cliched and also providing unnecessary jobs for the boys and girls too. The storyline just wasn't that close to real-life to warrant that bit of extra deception in my view,

Comparisons can be made of course with past classic conspiracy dramas of this type by the BBC going all the way back through "State Of Play" to "House Of Cards" and "Edge Of Darkness" and with only a few reservations as indicated above, I would add "Bodyguard" to that select pantheon of quality.