Dear BBC commissioning editor, 

While I’m eagerly looking forward to the sixth - and possibly final - series of Line of Duty this evening, I can’t help feeling that, once it’s over, there will be a gap in the schedule.

With that and a job advertisement on Twitter for an “experienced criminal investigator” to work alongside Ofsted to track down unregistered schools, I feel it’s time to develop a new education-crime genre to brighten the lives of Sunday-evening licence payers in need of a Mercurio-flavoured thrill. 

OK. So here it is. Sledgehammer. Lara Sledge is a woman for all seasons: an English literature graduate, experienced ex-teacher and part-time wrestler. She’s been working on the mean streets of Cumbria as a private investigator for the past five years, and now she wants to move on. 

She takes no shit. Backchat is dealt with in razor-sharp putdowns, physical threats are dismissed with her signature move - the eponymous Sledgehammer. 

And guess what? Whatever the situation, she can come up with an apt quotation for any occasion from just about any GCSE set text since 1987.

Line of Duty: An (Ofsted) Inspector Calls

Intrigued? You should be. This baby is practically writing itself. 

But let’s start with the basics: season one, episode one: An Inspector Calls. Sledge is lifting weights in her underground home gym when she receives a text from her old mentor, SMW. They met at a Bill Rogers conference back in the early 2000s, and although their paths have rarely crossed professionally - he’s based in Hackney and she is in rural Cumbria - he admired her work ethic and broad shoulders, while she, in turn, recognised tenacity when she saw it.

The text was short and to the point. “UR 12 - you’re the woman for the job.”

Cut to Sledge driving through the rain in her battered Land Rover Discovery, gazing wistfully through the rain-spattered windscreen, as wipers furiously sweep to and fro.

Sledge drives through countryside and then city streets, drawing up and deftly parking outside an imposing modern building constructed chiefly of glass and steel. The camera pans to a massive badge with “Unregistered 12” emblazoned on an upper storey.

From inside the building, there’s the ubiquitous camera shot from the all-glass balcony showing Sledge navigating the revolving door, getting her bearings and striding purposefully across the gleaming granite floor towards the interview suite. 

I’m going to pause here - metaphorically, of course - to make a couple of suggestions for the casting of Sledge. Obviously, Vicky McClure would be a shoo-in. But she may not want to be typecast. And, anyway, I see Sledge as mature: a substantial woman in more ways than one. 

I’m just thinking here as well - you know, for the good of the Beeb - that the larger older Northern lady as fearless all-action hero is very much unexplored territory, and could tick a couple of boxes when it comes to representing marginalised groups. Where you’d find such a woman could be an issue, but I’m sure we could put our heads together and find someone suitable.

Armed with educational acronyms

In said interview suite, once appointed - by a twinkling-eyed HMI who may or may not have a shadowy past (could we go Irish again? Or is that too Ted Hastings?), Sledge shakes on it, wisely commenting “…any distance greater than a single span requires a second pair of hands.” 

Her first job is to investigate an unregistered school, accompanied by undercover sidekick, maths supply teacher Harvey Goodwill. The school is in a warehouse, guarded by leather-clad thugs. 

Sledge makes short work of them, and boots down the makeshift corrugated iron door, to discover a rabble of unkempt teenagers. 

“What are these?” murmurs Sledge, “so withered and so wild in their attire…” She is just about to reflect on the inequities of educational life, when she is seized by a stocky figure in a balaclava, who, throwing a hood over her head, bundles her into the back of a van, which skids away through winding streets.

You probably get the picture, but later episodes - A Truth Universally Acknowledged and Rowing Through Putney - feature a scene with SMW (he’d oblige with a cameo, surely) demanding Sledge hand over her badge: “It’s one of our own we’re protecting, Lara - for God’s sake…” 

There will also be Harvey Goodwill disguised as a lollipop man, and Sledge - of course - taking out a teacher of creationism with a bitter “Bah! Humbug!” and her signature Sledgehammer drop.

There are details to sort, of course. Is there an unacknowledged sexual tension - a series of misunderstood midnight texts perhaps: “I do not think of thee - thou art too near me” - between Sledge and Goodwill, which leaves the viewer in a pleasing state of uncertainty over whether or not they’ll get it on in subsequent series?

Meanwhile, you’ll be happy to know, the education world has jargon, acronyms and initialisations aplenty. The episode where, in the lead up to a Section 8, the DHT scrutinises the GCSE NEA previously overseen by an NQT who thought he was assessing an EPQ, should bring the bloody house down.

I’m sure you’ll agree, it’s an exciting prospect. I look forward to hearing from you in the very near future.

Sarah Ledger is an English teacher and director of learning for Year 11 at William Howard School in Brampton, Cumbria. She has been teaching for 34 years