Warren Brown as PC Rocksavage. Pic: BBC Rating: ★★★★½ BBC1: starts Thursday, 30 August, 9pm Story: PC Rocksavage sees his patrol partner suffering a sadistic attack, which sends his already complicated life into turmoil when he takes matters into his own hands. Warren Brown steps up from being Idris Elba's sidekick in Luther to leading player in this complex, powerful new cop drama. This is one of the best opening episodes to a crime show I've seen this year, Line of Duty included. It's morally fraught, violent and has a captivating hero on the edge. Brown is a Liverpool response cop, the ones who race around in cars. PC John Paul Rocksavage (Sav) is a decent guy who looks after his ailing father (Michael Angelis) and is obviously crushed by his estrangement from Cassandra and their daughter, Libby, whom we see bumping into Sav on Crosby beach as the story begins. Stephen Graham is the nasty, brutal Finch Later, he is having lunch with his mate and colleague Andy Stockwell (Tom Hopper), when he sees a man called Finch, who's there with a gang of men, terrorising a waitress. Sav orders him out of the restaurant, but Finch promises that the next lone copper he sees will get a beating. Finch is played by Stephen Graham, who when he's not portraying sociopaths such as Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire is giving us a convincing skinhead in This Is England 86, and he is a scarily confrontational psycho. The next isolated copper he meets is Sav's partner Andy, and Sav sees his horrendous beating when he is locked out of party in what looks like a squat that they have been called to subdue that night. Read more »

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