The Responder, a BBC cop drama that thrashed out of the police procedural mould, is back for another long, dark stint on the night shift. Martin Freeman has dusted off his Scouse accent to reprise his BAFTA-nominated role as Chris Carson, a 999-response copper with a knack for finding chaos and then embroiling himself in it.
Yet with its second season, Chris wants out of the hellish cop car in favour of a nice, normal day job at a desk in the Liverpool precinct, so he can have some semblance of a relationship with his daughter.
Everyone has been even more beaten down in the six months since the events of the first season took place. Formerly judgemental rookie Rachel (Adelayo Adedayo) is the most noticeably so, as she works a lacerating job while coping with the wounds of her abusive relationship.
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Jodie (Faye McKeever) has tried to get on the straight and narrow with an above-board new dessert shop, but there just aren't the same numbers out for ice cream as there were for her more crooked wares.
Josh Finan is back as Marco, decidedly different as Scouse drug cartel lackey than he was as dopey Jethro in The Gentlemen. He's become a new dad since we last saw him, but isn't coming to it easily and needs to be taught by a neighbour how to change a nappy.
The best of the new cast additions for the second season is The Gold's Adam Nagaitis, who fills the dastardly void left by Ian Hart's Carl Sweeney. Nagaitis has mastered the syrupy smile that in any other show – see his heartbreaking turn as a firefighter in Chernobyl – would be wholly disarming, but here portends doom.
He plays Franny, a plasterer by day and an international drug dealer by night. Given it's at night that Chris comes across him, the result is both incredibly frustrating and depressing. So in that respect, not much has changed since season one.
Freeman is as convincing as ever in a role playing utterly against the meek Bilbo Baggins and defanged Everett K Ross types. The accent holds up, as do the haunted eyes with the trenches of fear, worry and fatigue underneath them.
Despite his attempts to break free, the night-time life of response work keeps sucking him in. Chris has a Howard Ratner in Uncut Gems approach, whereby each decision he makes is seemingly chosen for maximum stress and minimum upside.
Freeman and Adedayo have brilliant and unlikely moments of kinship in the squad car together, even as he leads them into trouble they could very much be fired for. Yet the second season also has a readiness to turn the camera away from Chris to the carnage unfolding in the lives of the characters all around him.
The unrelenting nightmare of the job – careening from one impossible situation to another – does have a feel of repetition to it.
That may be because it's the second season or because we're coming hot on the heels of Blue Lights season two, which also plays in the murky waters of police work not being everything Line of Duty thinks it's cracked up to be.
The sting of that first season of The Responder has dimmed a bit, even if its message is as prescient as ever. Officers responding to mental-health calls. Officers on the take because they're struggling to afford clothes for their kids. Officers whose personal lives fall to pieces under the strain of tough policing.
If you enjoyed the first season, you'll be pleased with this. If that was a bit too bleak for you then be warned, former response officer turned show creator Tony Schumacher hasn't suddenly decided to put the world of his characters to rights.
The Responder airs from May 5 on BBC One and streams on iPlayer.
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Previously Deputy TV Editor at Digital Spy and, before that, a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas. When she's not bingeing a boxset, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
