Trigger Point viewers were left divided by last night’s series finale, with the show’s villain reveal being branded “predictable” by some social media users.
Line of Duty star Vicky McClure leads the cast of the show as Met Police explosives officer Lana Washington, who is on London’s frontline of defence when a terror cell launches a series of co-ordinated attacks on the capital.
The series kicked off in devastating fashion with the shock death of Lana’s best friend Joel Nutkins (played by Adrian Lester), while her brother Billy (The Last Kingdom‘s Ewan Mitchell) also fell victim to a cunning attack in a later episode.
Needless to say, things became deeply personal for Lana, who suffered another emotional blow when she learnt the culprit of the atrocities she has been fighting. (Spoilers follow).
In the end, it was none other than Lana’s lover Karl Maguire (Warren Brown) who had been behind the attacks all along, revealing he had been motivated by a grudge against parliamentary candidate Ayesha Campbell-Khan (Salima Saxton).
The scene may have been a shock for the characters in the show, but RadioTimes.com readers claimed to have seen it coming from a mile away.
Twitter user Claire told us: “Predictable. Not even sure why I carried on with it.”
Jed Mercurio served as executive producer on the series, but the general consensus seems to be that it doesn’t stack up to his smash-hit BBC One drama, which tackles similar themes.
“Line of Duty viewers will have seen that one coming,” said Gerry Dolan.
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Another respondent, Jan Harvey, questioned whether the reveal of Karl as the terrorist could even be considered a twist, given how many people had been suspicious of him since his introduction.
In an interview with RadioTimes.com, Trigger Point writer Daniel Brierley admitted to being “worried” that people would easily guess the culprit, but hoped that viewers would think it was simply too “obvious”.
He said: “Something we worried about a lot in the process was that it’s clear when Karl turns up that he’s the villain. He turns up and you’re like, ‘Okay, we know that actor, we know this person, it seems too good to be true, etc.’
“And then I think we wanted to set up this kind of duplicity. We wanted it almost to look like he was so obviously the villain that he couldn’t possibly be the villain, if that makes sense.”
Despite the mixed response from viewers, Trigger Point has officially been renewed for season 2, with Brierley teasing his ideas for the next episodes in our exclusive interview.
Trigger Point is available to stream on BritBox. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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