‘Criminal Record’ Review: Lots of Polish, Little Payoff in Apple TV+’s New British Detective Drama
It is certainly not the case that every lackluster show title reflects a lackluster show. For every tepid Suspicion there’s a zippy Hijack, for every drab Liaison a gorgeous Foundation — and that’s just on Apple TV+. But an uninspired name can feel, in retrospect, like an early warning sign.
So it is with the streamer’s Criminal Record, not to be confused with Criminal Minds or Criminal: UK or Law & Order: Criminal Intent. The thriller has its merits, chief among them Cush Jumbo and Peter Capaldi as a pair of rival cops. But a tendency to prioritize themes over characters, combined with languid pacing and a too-measured tone, ultimately results in too little payoff for the time it demands.
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For a while, the basic promise of a twisty murder mystery with prestige-TV gloss is enough to sustain some interest. Jumbo plays June Lenker, a midlevel detective who comes into a tip that the killer behind a 2011 murder is still on the loose — even as the victim’s boyfriend, Errol Mathis (Tom Moutchi), serves time for the crime. In short order, her investigation runs afoul of Daniel Hegarty (Capaldi), the higher-ranking officer who originally closed the case. Their battle of wills cuts through thorny themes like misogyny, racism and police corruption, and becomes a case study in how law enforcement protects its own while destroying others.
Like all Apple TV+ series, Criminal Record looks expensive. Premiere director Jim Loach casts Hegarty and June’s London in a crisp gray light that reflects the mood, and has the side benefit of highlighting how painstakingly detailed every sprawling office or cramped flat set appears. Patient close-ups capture the way Jumbo’s wide eyes seem to take in everything and feel everything, and how Capaldi locks in Hegarty’s own emotions behind a seemingly perpetual scowl. Though the characters only sometimes clash in person, clever cross-cutting builds the tension between their respective halves of the story.
But that early gleam of promise gradually fades as Criminal Record settles into its rut. What might be a knotty enough case to sustain a two-hour movie or a four-episode arc within a longer drama starts to drag over eight hours. Which might be more forgivable if the world of the show were engaging enough to stand on its own merits — but despite creator Paul Rutman’s ear for natural-sounding dialogue, his characters hardly seem to deepen past the ideas they’re meant to represent.
June is saddled with a romantic partner (Stephen Campbell Moore), for instance, who’s quick to cast doubt whenever she complains of a microaggression at work or expresses fears that Hegarty is targeting her. But what attracted her to this tedious mansplainer in the first place, we never get to see; Leo seems to exist solely so Criminal Record can make the point that sometimes, even seemingly well-meaning white people just don’t get it. The likes of Errol’s lawyer Sonya (Aysha Kala) or Hegarty’s bigoted colleagues Kim (Shaun Dooley) and Tony (Charlie Creed-Miles) are at least more involved in the case, and thus more central to the narrative. Still, we get only the barest hints of their inner lives or their existences outside the case.
Even the central players are afforded less interiority than we might hope for. While Errol is not positioned as a lead, it’s nevertheless disappointing that the series seems only able to understand him as a victim of the system, at the expense of any idiosyncrasies or shortcomings that might render him more three-dimensional. In fairness, Hegarty and June don’t necessarily make out much better. Hegarty is opaque by design (which admittedly makes the rare moments when Capaldi is finally allowed to crack him open, as in a late-season flashback, all the more striking). And while Criminal Record does a solid job of conveying June’s growing paranoia and disillusionment, the emotional impact of her arc is blunted by the fact that we have hardly any idea of who she was at its start, and therefore of how far she’s come over the season.
Perhaps that’s because in the end, Criminal Record doesn’t really seem to know what to make of June’s entire experience either. Having acknowledged how the deck is stacked against cops like June (Black, female, uninterested in looking the other way) and in favor of cops like Hegarty (white, male, willing to protect his own), the series seems to consider its own work done. “She gave you the old ‘one bad apple’ speech,” June is told by a more seasoned officer after a fruitless discussion with a higher-up late in the season. The suggestion is that the same old speech isn’t enough, that it never has been, that there’s something more to be said or done. What that something might be, though, this show is not bold enough to imagine.
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