Line of Duty series six episode four – open thread

Tonight we remember Sarah Hughes who died from cancer, and send our thoughts to her family.

Sarah’s brilliant episode-by-episode recaps have accompanied Line of Duty since its first episode in 2012, filling in the gaps and providing a welcome home for fans to gather to discuss every plot twist and turn. She knew she wanted to write about the show from the very beginning, phoning me to share her excitement about Jed Mercurio’s new police corruption drama.

At the time, I was the Guardian’s TV editor and Sarah and I talked a lot – all the warmth, generosity and energy that infuse her writing also made her fantastic to work and spend time with – and I always looked forward to our conversations. She had a brilliant eye for a hit show, and the previous year had persuaded me that a fantasy epic was going to be the biggest thing on telly, even while I was raising my eyebrows at the idea of mainstream dragons. Of course, Game of Thrones proved to be unmissable, as did Sarah’s writing about it.

But this time, her attention was focused not on a massive HBO number, but a weeknight BBC Two drama. Line of Duty was going to be must-watch television, she promised – the kind of gripping tale that needed to be obsessed over with other viewers.

Sarah, as so often, called it exactly right. Her Line of Duty recaps and the conversations they prompted proved as compelling as the drama itself (sometimes more so). We have all loved reading the theories and debates, celebrating Ted Hastings’ splendid turn of phrase, and discovering the things we had missed in the episode.

So many of us found her clever, funny, insightful recaps to be the perfect companion to the series. Earlier this week, Jed Mercurio paid tribute to Sarah, saying: “Her writing stood out as being inspired by a love of TV, stimulating others to feel the same and adding to her readers’ enjoyment of their favourite programmes. We send our deepest sympathies to her family, friends and colleagues.”