‘Criminal Record’ Review: Apple’s British Crime Series Is a Nail-Biter
Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo in Apple’s “Criminal Record.”
Behold, one of my favorite shows from Apple in recent memory. The Paul Rutman-created Criminal Record may have gone unnoticed by Apple’s marketing push as the streamer is focused on Masters of the Air, but I’m so glad I watched it.
Set in modern-day London, but haunted by an investigation that took place in the early 2010s, Criminal Record follows Detective Sargeant June Lenker’s (Cush Jumbo) hunt for a possible case of wrongful conviction. It all began when an anonymous caller rang the emergency line saying her partner was threatening to kill her and had been bragging constantly about having done it before and gotten away with it. Another man, she said, was in Whitecross prison on a 24-year sentence for his crime. By the time the police car got to the phone booth where the caller was at, she had already fled the scene. Was it a prank? Was it actually real? And why did she keep insisting “No names”? The series presents a couple of possibilities for that one, but Rutman failed to bring up a different answer than the obvious one: plot armor.
There are a lot of questions that had easy answers, but it took someone with real courage to start going down the rabbit hole. Meet Jumbo’s DS Lenker, a young mother and passionate police officer who not only believes there is reason to be hopeful about police action in the City, but hopes to one day be the personification of that feeling. She soon finds the man who the caller was talking about: Errol Mathis (Tom Moutchi), who confessed to killing his girlfriend after a short investigation led by DCI Daniel Hegarty (Peter Capaldi). It’s not long before DS Lenker is knocking on Hegarty’s door, and after awkwardly shutting down any possibilities of a wrongful conviction, both officers leave the meeting scratching their heads.
Hegarty, we soon find, has a turbulent past to hide, and soon we realize that there is something completely wrong about the investigation; there is no doubt in our eyes that Errol should be a free man, it’s all the DCI’s fault. But how long will it take Lenker to realize that, despite the fact that she’s already highly suspicious of Hegarty? And how deep does this conspiracy go? Hagerty is constantly on the phone speaking to other veteran officers, hinting that there is a whole network of corrupt policemen running the game, yet there’s something different about Capaldi’s character.
Cush Jumbo in Apple’s “Criminal Record.”
Criminal Record takes a close look at racist and white supremacist practices inside the British police force, both towards the citizens and towards other cops. Lenker is getting pushed around by Hagerty and his gang, but how much of that is coming out of fear of having their illegal practices exposed and how much is it actually just pure old racism? The answer, we’ll find, is not as easy as it looks, as racism and fear can take many faces, some of which are apparent to some but not to others. How high up the ladder is Hagerty, exactly, and how stable is that ladder?
As the episodes progress, we find that there are many sides to him. Though he’s never sold to us as a misunderstood character who was trying to do the right thing all along, Rutman’s writing in coordination with Capaldi’s performance shows us some vulnerability to his character, especially through his relation to some of the younger characters played by Maisie Ayres and Rasaq Kukoyi, and how he starts to second guess how his decisions are affecting innocent people.
Though there is nothing truly groundbreaking in terms of narrative achieved by Criminal Record, the truth is that Rutman and directors Shaun James Grant and Jim Loach kept me on the edge of my seat for the majority of the eight episodes. That is mostly due to the fact that the premise was intriguing enough right off the bat, and they were able to carry that momentum through the entire first episode. By the end, the story and mostly the character of DS Lenker, one of those morally righteous characters who you can’t stop rooting for, had me hooked. Jumbo’s performance was also pretty engaging and she went toe-to-toe with Peter Capaldi, which is no easy feat.
Maisie Ayres and Rasaq Kukoyi in Apple’s “Criminal Record,”
It’s then that Rutman starts to introduce some twists and turns to the plot, and though it’s never not clear who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, the stakes for the secondary characters in the story are raised repeatedly through the eight-episode run. We may never actually fear for Lenker’s job security or life, but she gets herself into several fights that could cause severe trauma, yet shows enough inner strength to keep fighting despite the many faceless warnings to shut up and go back to her desk.
Criminal Record will not be must-watch TV for the next six weeks, and it still feels like Rutman’s commentary on race leaves a lot on the table and could have actually been a lot more nuanced and mature (even if we usually see this type of discourse surrounding American TV). But for what it’s worth, it kept me entertained for a few hours while binging it and, if nothing else, put Cush Jumbo on my radar (I’m not super familiar with her work up until this point).
The first two episodes of Criminal Record will be available to stream on Apple TV Plus starting on January 10.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
