SERIES REVIEW: Criminal Record (S2)
I’ll admit, I didn’t expect Criminal Record to get a second series. The first run felt very much like a one-and-done affair: a slick, engrossing cat-and-mouse game expertly played by and between Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo. It wasn’t flawless, but it was a smart, compelling thriller that seemed to have told a complete story.
Yet here we are again, with Jumbo’s June Lenker and Capaldi’s Daniel Hegarty still operating in different corners of the police world, their paths destined to cross once more.
The catalyst is an incident in Suffolk Square, London. An Islamic rally is teetering on the edge of criminality as police commanders wait for a speaker to cross a legal line. Instead, the event is stormed by far-right protesters and, amid the chaos, a young Muslim teenager is stabbed to death. Lenker, who was present at the scene, is consumed by guilt and becomes determined to identify the killer while an inquiry examines how the situation was handled.
Haunted by a fleeting image of the man she believes committed the murder, Lenker does what Lenker always does: ignores warnings and digs deeper. Her investigation leads her to Billy Fielding, an escaped prisoner, and inevitably back into the orbit of her old adversary, Daniel Hegarty. Now working in intelligence, Hegarty knows exactly where Billy is and what he’s doing. The catch? He wants to turn him into an asset.
Billy is the key to locating seven stolen explosive devices and infiltrating the circle of Cosmo Thompson, a charismatic far-right agitator with a huge online following. Thompson is a master populist, peddling lies about race, religion and national identity, yet retaining an unnerving ability to persuade those around him.
What follows is Operation Samphire, a tense undercover operation in which Hegarty and Lenker attempt to bring Thompson’s network down. As you might come to expect with any undercover operation on TV, there are close calls, shifting loyalties and mounting pressure throughout.
As the series progresses, a confrontation between Hegarty and Thompson feels something we’re building up to, and, sure enough, this confrontation – in a police station interview room – delivers some of the season’s strongest scenes. In fact, you could argue that while the cat-and-mouse element of series one was between Hegarty and Lenker, in this series it’s between Thompson Hegarty.
In the crackling interview scene, Thompson has been very clever and has deliberately got himself arrested, so he’s out of harm’s way and can plead innocence as his goons go about the city and detonate bombs.
Ultimately, the series revolves around moral compromise. As bomb attacks loom across London, Lenker and Hegarty must decide whether granting Thompson immunity is worth the chance of saving lives. It’s a dilemma that perfectly encapsulates the show’s fascination with ethical grey areas.
Interestingly, the power dynamic between Hegarty and Lenker has also shifted in this series. In season one, Lenker feared Hegarty could destroy her career. Here, her obsession with finding the teenager’s killer makes her almost fearless. Hegarty, meanwhile, appears less morally compromised than before. For perhaps the first time, they feel like equals.
There’s a nasty sting in the tail for Lenker before the credits roll, but the season ends on a quietly satisfying note as she and Hegarty finally sit down for a drink together. Equals at last. It’s a bold development, but one that makes sense.
With Capaldi, in particular, on tip-top form (he’s a little more subtle in this series, but no less superb), it’s another solid series. Perhaps not quite as engrossing as the first – perhaps too topical, too close to home at the moment and, therefore, an easy target/subject to dig into – but still worth a watch.
Paul Hirons
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Criminal Record is broadcast in the UK on Apple TV
