Criminal Record (Apple TV)
Rating: Four out of five stars.
The ghost of Malcolm Tucker, the foul-mouthed spin doctor from politics sitcom The Thick Of It, was looming over Westminster on Tuesday.
Dame Emily Thornberry’s revelation that the Prime Minister’s attack dog Morgan McSweeney ordered the chief civil servant at the Foreign office to do his bidding, by snarling, ‘Just f***ing approve it,’ was full-on, spittle-flecked Tucker in action.
By a ghoulish coincidence, Peter Capaldi — the cadaverous actor who played Tucker — is also back, looking more gaunt and demonic than ever, as Criminal Record returns.
In one scene, under a railway viaduct, he is lit in a blood-red glow, like Lucifer on day-release from Hell. When TV dramatists come to tell the story of Keir Starmer’s downfall (as they will, just as there have been multiple remakes of the Emily-and-
Andrew Newsnight interview), they could do no better than to cast Capaldi as Peter Mandelson.
He’s relishing his role as DCI Daniel Hegarty, all moral complexities and menace. His unwilling partner once again is the diligent but naive DI June Lenker, a copper so kind-hearted that she’s apt to burst into tears in the middle of a riot.
Hegarty is corrupt. He’s willing to bend any rule and betray any principle, in order to get a conviction. Whether or not the culprit is guilty doesn’t much matter, as long as the Chief Inspector’s version of justice is done.
After a long career of fitting up crooks, he spends most of his time these days covering his tracks and ensuring the bodies remain buried. Or, as he terms it, working in ‘Intelligence’.
Peter Capaldi is back, looking more gaunt and demonic than ever, as Criminal Record returns.
Capaldi is relishing his role as DCI Daniel Hegarty, all moral complexities and menace
In every shot, he looks savage, like an executioner at a wedding, in a smart jacket and buttoned-up shirt. The final scene sees him crouched over a colleague’s unconscious body, and turning to hiss at a terrified fugitive, ‘Don’t you ever say my name again!’
The pose was medieval, something you’d see in a woodcut drawing of witches and devils. Hegarty might have been trying to revive the man, or eat him alive.
If you haven’t seen the previous series of Criminal Record, released in 2024, this instalment will leave you confused. But watching the first one won’t help much either.
The plot is bewildering: after Lenker spots a face she recognises among the rioters, as Muslim extremists and neo-Nazi thugs clash, she is warned not to follow the lead — even though the youth is supposed to be in prison for murdering his girlfriend.
Naturally, Lenker conducts her own private investigation, and finds herself trampling on Hegarty’s surveillance operation.
In vivid colours and cinematic composition, London is made to look like a post-apocalyptic hellhole — so gritty, as I said when I last reviewed the show, that you’ll need to take a shower and wash your hair afterwards.
To get the full effect, watch it on a widescreen TV if you can — not a phone.
