Television is positively bursting with crime dramas, from cosy mysteries and familiar procedurals, to cold-case dramas and whodunnits. With viewers already spoiled for choice when it comes to quality options in this space, it’s easy to see why some series, however excellent they might be, can fall through the cracks. But one of the most underrated crime series of the past few years is returning to our screens for a second season, and it’s better than ever this time around.
Apple TV’s Criminal Record may have gotten a little lost in the shuffle of some of the streamer’s bigger, buzzier titles, but we’d argue that the series is one of the streamer’s best. Blending elements from across the crime genre, it’s a drama that doesn’t fit particularly neatly into any pre-existing box.
Simultaneously wrestling with questions of legacy and generational change within the police force, and digging into the specifics of a wrongful conviction case, the drama’s first season delighted in playing with expectations about what kind of show we were watching, and whose perspective we were meant to trust.
Apple TV
Its second outing does much the same, forcing the previously at odds DCI Daniel Hegarty (Peter Capaldi) and DS June Lenker (Cush Jumbo) to work together on a case that quickly spirals outward to encompass a much more potentially devastating crime.
Despite the revelation that he falsified evidence at the conclusion of last season, Hegarty hasn’t been pushed out of power, but merely reassigned. Now working for the intelligence division, he’s got his finger in everything from monitoring hate groups to weapons tracking, wielding power for the alleged “greater good” with little concern for how many rules and/or norms he has to break along the way.
Lenker, for her part, is more sure of herself and her instincts than when last we saw her, but she’s still haunted by the events of the show’s first season, most notably when it comes to her relationships with her husband (Stephen Campbell Moore) and son (Jordan A. Nash).
A darker and more ambitious outing than its predecessor, Criminal Record season two wrestles with uncomfortably timely questions. As the season progresses, difficult compromises are made, shocking relationships are revealed, and questions are asked about what trade-offs we’re all willing to make in the name of public safety.
If season one was about looking inward at systemic failures, Criminal Record’s second season turns that focus outward, blurring moral lines as our leads are faced with a series of increasingly impossible choices and a complex undercover operation that involves working with some objectively shady collaborators.
Apple TV
By putting Hegarty and Lenker, at least nominally, on the same side, Criminal Record’s second season gives us more of what made the first so compelling — Capaldi and Jumbo sharing scenes together.
Hegarty is, in large part, the same as he ever was: morally ambiguous, narratively slippery, and somehow still capable of surprising warmth. The character is purposefully (and fascinatingly) hard to pin down.
As Lenker is drawn back into his orbit, with full knowledge of both the kind of man he is and the tactics he’s willing to employ, she finds herself forced to confront several uncomfortable truths about herself. (Chief among them being that she’s actually quite a bit more like Hegarty than she’d probably like to admit.)
The show has smartly jettisoned some of the first season’s more extraneous side plots and characters — even June’s husband Leo now only really exists to illustrate how much she’s changed as a result of her experiences — and keeps the focus firmly on the leads that we’re here to see.
Apple TV+
Jumbo remains excellent in a role that requires her to frequently swing from righteous fury to reluctant acceptance, but it’s Capaldi who once again steals the show with a commanding, nuanced performance that adds complicated layers to a character that, in the hands of a lesser actor, would likely become frustratingly one-note.
Yes, Hegarty is dark, manipulative, enigmatic, and infuriating by turns as he keeps secrets, bends the rules, and embraces whatever version of the truth is most convenient for him at any given moment. Yet, Capaldi also manages to infuse his character with a genuine (if occasionally self-serving) sense of justice, and his utter determination to thwart the escalating plot is almost enough to make up for the increasingly amoral choices he makes along the way.
Criminal Record’s second season steadily builds tension throughout its eight episodes, as secrets are revealed, and viewers are denied easy answers about how they’re meant to feel about any of it.
But it’s the performances at its centre that make the show such compulsively watchable television, and that will leave you wanting to see where the series could possibly go next.
Criminal Record season 2 returns to Apple TV on April 22.