'Line of Duty' got EVEN darker this week, as writer Jed Mercurio brilliantly balanced the brooding, stealthy interrogations of silver fox Deputy Chief Constable Dryden and merry widower Richard Akers, with the more pulsating car crash final moments.
Dryden was starting to look guilty of a lot more than a speeding offence, even before we discovered that - who knew? - he and Lindsay Denton had been sharing intimate stakeouts of hotel rooms. And Richard Akers was quite blatantly caught with his hands in the till, or rather the suitcase under the bed, while his cuckolded wife was looking more culpable by the minute.
Who to believe? Fleming and Arnott have got their work cut out
But what Mercurio's pulled off so perfectly is the complication - that of each of the AC-12 officers charged with upholding the law having their own reasons for not pressing these slippery customers too hard, for fear of revealing their own ill-doings.
Meanwhile, the increasingly innocent looking DI Denton's luck took an even bleaker turn, as she opted for filial duty over freedom, jumped from frying pan into fire, and ended up the diametric opposite to safe hands.
It looks like we'll be lucky if this crime ever gets sorted, with all the investigating officers up to their own necks, and desperately trying to save themselves, in what amounts to a giant chess game. Only two episodes to go.