Roush Review: Brit Police Drama ‘Criminal Record’ Plays a Tense Game of Cat & Mouse
Review
Criminal Record
When you’re staging a classic cat-and-mouse game, it helps to have absolute beasts on hand to portray the cagey adversaries. Criminal Record, a British crime drama in the powerful tradition of Line of Duty and Prime Suspect, is blessed to have two of the best circling each other for eight gripping episodes.
Cush Jumbo, who’s most familiar to U.S. audiences for her brash performance on The Good Wife, is the underdog: Detective Sergeant June Lenker, only a year-and-a-half on the beat when she goes toe to toe with veteran Detective Chief Inspector Daniel Hegarty. This steely pro, played with a grave and cadaverous intensity by former Doctor Who Peter Capaldi, is none too pleased when June digs into a possible miscarriage of justice in a murder case he closed back in 2012.
The catalyst: a panicked call to a domestic-abuse hotline from an anonymous woman who says her boyfriend bragged about a stabbing for which another man went to prison. When June connects the dots to Errol Mathis (Tom Moutchi), imprisoned after a confession he later retracted, her crusade for the truth puts her on a collision course with a condescending Hegarty and his old-boys network.
“You see what you want to see,” he scoffs, suggesting her inquiry is tainted by “unconscious bias” — ironic considering the level of sexism and racism she encounters while asking uncomfortable questions to peeved superior officers. One of Hegarty’s minions even barks that she’s just a “token copper.”
Apple TV+
The series clearly sympathizes with June, with Jumbo dynamically running the gamut of emotions from angry conviction to frustrated despair. But series creator Paul Rutman also takes pains to humanize Hegarty as a tragic figure dealing with his own private pain and guilt. Their mutual hostility is leavened with grudging respect, even as June wonders what he’s hiding and why a detective of his standing would compromise his professional integrity on this troubling case. (The excellent seventh episode, airing February 14, plays back the crime and its murky aftermath from Hegarty’s perspective.)
Unfolding against a backdrop of public animus toward a police department pledging reform, Criminal Record is as relevant as it is suspenseful, crackling whenever Jumbo and Capaldi share the screen. Though several of the shocking final twists come out of left field, it’s undeniably chilling when Hegarty warns the pestersome upstart, “Who knows what any of us are capable of on any given day?”
Like all great masters of cunning ambiguity, Capaldi keeps you guessing up to the very final scene whether Hegarty is hero or villain — or possibly a combination of both.
Criminal Record, Series Premiere (two episodes), Wednesday, January 10, Apple TV+
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