‘Criminal Record’: How Far Would Hegarty Go to Stop Lenker’s Investigation?

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Criminal Record Episode 3 “Kid in the Park.”]

How far will Hegarty (Peter Capaldi) go to keep Lenker (Cush Jumbo) from looking too closely in her investigation on Criminal Record? The latest episode very strongly hints at that answer.

The Apple TV+ crime thriller follows the two detectives as she digs into a murder case from his past, one that could very well threaten the legacy he’s determined to protect. And while they’re investigating the drive-by shooting of a young boy, she’s not letting the other case go and also visits Errol (Tom Moutchi) in prison; he may or may not have committed the crime for which he was convicted.

After Hegarty hears of Lenker being on the warpath, from the surveillance van, he sees the suspect approaching her from behind — and he’s armed. It’s not until it’s almost too late — and there’s someone else in the van — that he warns her to fall back. (Jason shoots, but misses.) But was he going to let her get shot and possibly killed?

“Yes,” Capaldi tells TV Insider immediately, as if it’s a no-brainer. He and Jumbo then laugh. “It would be convenient, wouldn’t it?” she admits.

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“It’s good that you don’t know the answer and you’ve watched it,” according to Capaldi.

But does Lenker, at this point, think he’d go that far? “What she knows is that she knows how these operations work. She knows that when she sees that guy arrive with a gun, they’re being watched by surveillance, they can be seen, and no one’s doing anything. That’s why I would say she knows,” says Jumbo.

“Whether in that moment she thinks he’s trying to make anything happen, I don’t think so, but it’s very confusing and it’s purposefully so that he suddenly shows up at the end of that scene as if he’s the first person on the scene, the first person to help,” she continues. “It’s all the more confusing, and that’s what he keeps trying to do at every turn, is to kind of confuse her. ‘I’m after you, I’m not after you. Am I after you? You don’t know if I’m you.’ I think that’s what she feels he’s trying to do.”

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Executive producer Elaine Collins calls that an open question — about Hegarty, “about, how far would he go? I don’t think we ever really know, but it’s the first hint I think that there is something really quite dark at play here.”

Adds writer and executive producer Paul Rutman, “I’d go further than that, and I would say that I think Hegarty doesn’t know. I think it’s one of those things that, in a way he is saved from the darkest part of himself by that young guy walking in. I felt when I thought about that moment when I was writing it, that suddenly a kind of door was swinging open and he is seeing in himself, ‘Jesus, am I capable of this?’ I think if you look at what happens after that, he’s quite conciliatory to her and he brings her into the tent and he brings her into the press conference. I think part of that is his conscience, because I think a part of him knows what he could have done.”

When Lenker thanks him for saving her life (and comes up with a story to explain her visit to the prison), Hegarty tells her they’re all marching to the same drum and he’s glad she’s in one piece. But now that we’ve seen what he could do, let’s just say we hope Lenker’s watching her back.

Criminal Record, Wednesdays, Apple TV+