Criminal Record: Season 1 - Review

Rating: 5 out of 5

PETER Capaldi and Cush Jumbo create one of the most intense and absorbing rivalries in recent TV memory in the season of Apple’a blistering crime thriller Criminal Minds Record.

They play two police officers on the opposite side of a case - the former, a wily veteran attempting to cover his tracks on an old investigation, while the former looks into a potential wrongful conviction while attempting to thwart another murder.

Their paths collide when a domestic violence victim makes an anonymous call suggesting that her partner might have previously killed someone called Adelaide Burrows.

It doesn’t take long for DS June Lenker (Jumbo) to find out that DCI Daniel Hegarty (Capaldi) was the investigating officer on the Burrows case and the victim’s boyfriend, Errol Mathis, was charged with her murder.

Mathis is serving a 24-year prison sentence – but the aforementioned caller has suggested that he was wrongly convicted as her attacker has since laid claim to it.

Hegarty is reluctant to retread old ground but appears to be hiding the truth, even going so far as to dissuade Lenker from pursuing it herself and doing whatever he can to place obstacles in her path. But with another life on the line, Lenker remains doggedly persistent and committed, prompting a battle of wits between the two that could place both of their careers in jeopardy.

Ccreated by BAFTA-nominated writer Paul Rutman, Criminal Record largely fell under a lot of people’s radar when it first aired a couple of years ago - but has since enjoyed something of a revival in light of a similarly acclaimed second series.

This first run is a humdinger. Aside from the scorching intensity that Capaldi and Jumbo bring to the screen, the series confronts a number of relevant issues in an intelligent and suitably probing fashion (a la previous Brit hits such as Line of Duty and The Responder).

Primary among those is racism in institutional and individual forms - something that feels all the more relevant when set against the context of recent headlines about two-tier policing and corruption within the police force.

Conversations invite debate - both from the characters themselves, who are forced to question their own biases and motivations, as well as from viewers, who are invited to examine the complexity of certain points of view and actions.

These are richly drawn characters - complex, nuanced and often difficult to read. Capaldi, in particular, plays his cards so close to his chest that he’s really hard to understand at times; his motivations only really becoming clear during the final episodes. But even then, Rutman refuses to let anyone off the hook, because inviting questions that linger beyond the final credits.

Hence, what constitutes subconscious and unconscious racism and bias? Do some ends justify the means if the greater good is served? And should we hold officers of the law to a higher standard than the rest of us? Do they face unnecessary pressure?

And if Capaldi’s Hegarty is particularly put under the microscope and probed for all of his hypocrisies and dubious choices, then so too is Jumbo’s Lenker, whose own biases and reactions to certain situations are questioned just as vociferously.

The line between what constitutes racism and sexism sometimes seems to run ambiguously close to paranoia and hyper sensitivity.

The two actors deliver powerhouse performances throughout, fully embracing the flaws in their characters as much as their strengths - as does a top drawer supporting cast that extends to Cathy Tyson as Errol’s campaigning mother, Doris; Zoë Wanamaker as Lenker’s elderly mother, Maureen; Aysha Kala, as indefatigable lawyer Sonya; Tom Moutchi, as Errol; Rasaq Kukoyi, as Errol’s step-son Patrick, and Charlie Creed-Miles as one of Hegarty’s more morally dubious (and distinctly racist) partners, DS Tony Gilfoyle (now riddled with MS, which is also convincingly portrayed).

Yet while certainly allowing the show to indulge in its intelligent conversations and provocative themes, Rutman also maintains a fierce momentum with a race against the clock scenario unfolding that keeps audiences invested in the thriller aspects of the case.

Criminal Record contains plenty of surprises and always keeps you guessing - as much about the motivations of certain characters as well as who will survive and, perhaps most relevantly for this kind of show, who the real killer might be. The issue of trust is always present too - as friends and colleagues can quickly betray each in pursuit of self gain or self protection.

Criminal Record is a masterful British crime thriller that exhilarates on so many levels.