Criminal Record Season 1 Episodes 1 and 2 Review: Emergency Caller / Two Calls
Apple’s new broody crime drama, Criminal Record, premieres with two episodes, Criminal Record Season 1 Episode 1, “Emergency Caller,” and Criminal Record Season 1 Episode 2, “Two Calls.”
“Emergency Caller” immediately sets the tone of the series. It opens with a scene of the character we later learn is DCI Daniel Hegarty (Peter Capaldi). The scene shows Hegarty moonlighting as a chauffeur of sorts and sharing grisly stories from his investigations as a DCI.
The mood of the scene is tense from the very first shots. It feels sinister. There’s a simmering volatility. It quickly creates a distrust of Hegarty for viewers, even if we don’t know why yet.
From there, “Emergency Caller” moves to the inciting incident for the show’s central mystery, an anonymous 999 call. During the call, a woman says her boyfriend attacked her. She claims that he killed another woman in the same way years ago.
A murder that she also claims another man was falsely convicted of and serving a 24-year sentence for.
With so little to go on, things might have ended there. However, the call follow-up lands on the desk of our other main character, tenacious DS June Lenker (Cush Jumbo).
June looks into the allegations after prompting from the operator who took the original call. She quickly detemines which case it is and who the lead investigator on the case was.
Surprise, surprise, the lead investigator turns out to be none other than DCI Daniel Hegarty. Hegarty and June are now on a collision course that will drive the rest of the season.
The first two episodes tease plenty of potential for a drama that will explore relevant themes about policing, privilege, racism, and power.
One particularly interesting moment comes from the first episode. It hints at how these themes will be woven into the story. Hegarty calls the suspect in the case June is looking into a poor man’s OJ. June’s reaction to this comment differs significantly from her white husband’s.
For June, the off-the-cuff comment sets off red flags immediately. She instinctively sees the comment as laced with racism, while her husband thinks she is reading too much into it.
In another example, June is suspicious of why her son is given a foul in his football match. On the other hand, her husband doesn’t think anything of it.
Both moments effectively demonstrate how these two experience the world differently. They also show how June is made to feel aggressive and paranoid if she says anything.
If the series continues to push on themes, it has every chance to be an incredibly relevant examination of society in addition to a twisty, compelling crime story.
The story benefits from the tense, sinister mood described above. It underscores each scene with a sense of uneasiness and unseen danger. It amplifies the feeling that everyone has a hidden agenda and those in power can’t be trusted.
More than anything else, though, the show’s biggest asset thus far is its leads, Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo. That isn’t surprising, given that each has a long resume of fine performances already.
Both Capaldi and Jumbo do a fantastic job of drawing viewers into their characters and creating a vivid portrait of them both through the delivery of their lines and in the moments in between.
We only get a handful of scenes of them together on the first two episodes. Still, it’s enough to make viewers excited for their future confrontations.
It’s still a bit early to call the series great, though. While the craft and execution are excellent, the plot feels somewhat boilerplate until the end of “Two Calls.”
However, being too critical of that this early isn’t fair. The first two episodes primarily set the stage for the rest of the season. I’m mostly ambivalent about my level of investment in the case at this point.
Truth be told, there isn’t really a question of whether the man in prison is guilty or whether Hegarty is covering something up. He clearly did put an innocent man in jail. Whether he thinks the man is guilty or not, he knows he crossed some lines to get that conviction, too.
The real intrigue will be in why Hegarty imprisoned the wrong man. It will be discovering who else is involved and what sort of larger conspiracy is at play.
We’re understandably not there yet, so we’ll have to wait and see how the rest of the season plays out before we can judge whether the case is interesting. The twist at the end of “Two Calls” is at least a promising one, though.
What did you think of this episode of Criminal Record? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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New episodes of Criminal Record stream Wednesdays on AppleTV+
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Sarah Fields
Sarah is an obsessive geek who likes to get into the weeds and over think things. She is passionate about Sci-Fi and comics and is a giant classic film nerd. Sarah cares deeply about media representation and the power of telling diverse stories. When she's not writing or watching her favorite shows she spends her days working in the non-profit world trying to make life a little better for those that need some extra help.