Code 404, series 2, review: a gloriously silly CBBC version of Line of Duty
If you’re going to write a crime-based comedy starring two Line of Duty alumni, you’d be missing a trick if you didn’t reference it. So the second series of Code 404 (Sky Showcase/Comedy), a light-hearted vehicle for the talents of Daniel Mays and Stephen Graham, began in classic LoD style: a prison transfer intercepted by villains.
The scene had it all, including an armed officer/sitting duck in the back of the van, and a harried boss barking orders in the control room. “All units move in.
Go, go, go!” said the DCS (Rosie Cavaliero). Except nobody could hear her order. “You have to press the button, love,” sighed Graham’s DI Roy Carver. It’s that sort of comedy.
Graham makes Code 404 amusing by playing it absolutely straight. Mays is the goofy one who goes all in on the slapstick gags. His character is called John Major, presumably because someone on the writing team was tickled by the fact that the name of Britain’s greyest Prime Minister (well, until that Edwina Currie revelation) would also rather suit an action hero.
The premise, if you missed series one, is that Major was killed in the line of duty (see what they did there) but resurrected thanks to artificial intelligence. Awkwardly, he came back to discover that his widow, played by Anna Maxwell Martin, had been having an affair with Graham, formerly his partner and best buddy. Hence their estrangement at the beginning of series two.
The jokes are schoolboy silly, and you will enjoy them if you’re the sort of person to laugh at Major making sweary prank calls to Carver from the other side of the office. I am that person. “I want a clean break,” Major’s widow says. “You mean like Center Parcs?” asks Major. That’s the other running gag: Major has a big ego but a small brain.
Code 404’s weakness is the plots, which seem to be the show’s lowest priority – it’s not a serious crime drama, so why put any serious thought into the crime bit? I watched two episodes and had tuned out of the storyline before the first was over;
I couldn’t tell you what was happening in it, but it seemed like something you might find on CBBC. Still, the actors are having a laugh, and it’s infectious.
