The second series is even grimmer than the first, perhaps to a fault. Long-suffering Superintendant Tony Clark (part of the CIB, the police for the police, an organisation replaced a few years ago in real life) has just shopped his own boss (played by the ever brilliant Tony Doyle, and happily not the last we see of him) up for serious malpractice. However, the opening buzz he has gotten for this coup is soon sunk, and his new boos is the person at CIB he hates the most. From there, Clark starts to self-destruct. He can sort out neither his personal nor professional life, and it's a very rare episode that does not end with something having gone wrong with either someone's life or with the case being a total bust.
Between the Lines was a series with a shelf life; there are only so many 'bent cop' stories to do, and this series extends the 'Between the Lines' theme to the security services also. This makes for interesting episodes but you soon get the feeling the writers were shutting down the main concept, as indeed they do by the end of the series. Meanwhile, the episode 'Manslaughter', which having no problems in terms of quality, wasn't really a BTL episode at all. It was something that could have occurred in any police show, like Law and Order. It just so happens the perpetrator was a policeman (they even have to make a plot exiuse in episode as to why CIB is investigating at all, as no police malpratice was involved).
But even as the concept changes, the series remains superb. What is stopping me giving this a fifth star is the appalling attention to detail the makers of the DVD have put in. Not content with accidentally using the second series background with the first series DVD menu and vice-versa, the second series DVD insides have several descriptions of episodes that bear absolutely no resemblance to the episodes themselves at all. It's very odd, because some of the descriptions looked like they may have made interesting BTL plots... they just never happened. I've never actually seen anything like that happen before, and it is a shame that no-one noticed, but obviously it has no bearing on the quality of the programme at all, which is very high.
Highly recommended to all.
Nothing in my eyes has ever really come close - there could be an argument for 'Spooks' and 'The Cops' but you could soon pick holes in it. The writing/storylines, the characters, the acting, and the the direction are all top notch and Series 2 is as equally good as the first. I'm sure if Pearson, Georgeson and Redmond were questioned on their acting career highlights 'Between the Lines' would spring to the forefront. I cant imagine 'Trevor's world of Sport' being quite as exciting to make for Pearson as playing the complex but endearing Tony Clark and I'm certain Georgeson would rather be portraying streetwise Harry Naylor than appearing as himself on 'Call my Bluff'.
This show had everything you could want - there will probably never be another quite like it as we are now in 2006 and TV drama is generally sh*te. In the 90's you had 'BTL', 'Civvies', 'Cracker' even 'Casualty' was better, unfortunately these days we have become saturated with mind numbing Celebrity and Reality TV, and big budget/poor quality drama such as 'Rome' interspersed with monotonous rolling news programmes. The TV license has never been such a financial burden.
So thank the DVD for being invented, grab yourself a copy of 'BTL 2', turn off that foul 'different shades of red' BBC wallpaper, and the stupid idiots performing martial arts on a roof somewhere while some pretentious fool tells you what 'the ONE to watch' is and go back to the good old 90's when the Beep were good value, 'BTL' was the ONE to watch, and TV programmes were introduced with the good old revolving globe which had a big fat '1' stamped on the front of it....
![Between The Lines : Complete BBC Series 2 [1992]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51EPX04B63L._SL160_.jpg)
