Policing Across Borders: Line of Duty and the Politics of National Identity

In this article, I argue that the first series of Line of Duty (BBC2, 2012- ) invites viewers to consider the wider politicized function of the police as well as the depictions of criminality in Britain. It argues that the series reflects a broader shift in the understanding of the British crime drama as not simply a reproduction of national concerns, but rather a new discourse of transnational anxieties. I offer an analysis of how representations of crime and criminality are viewed through the lens of current news media trends to examine the relationship between the British crime drama, and the wider socio-economic and political concerns in which articulations of both national, and increasingly transnational identities can become visible.