Criminal, Netflix
Four languages, four casts, one stylised set and a one-size fits all premise – the game of cat and mouse which ensues when detectives and suspects spar in the interrogation room – make this new Netflix offering one of the network’s most compelling and intriguing so far.
There are 12 episodes in the ambitious anthology series, three each in English, German, French and Spanish, and all shot on the same paranoia-inducing set. It has three spaces: a brightly-lit room decorated with what looks like parquet floor wall-hangings (this is where the questioning takes place) and, through the one way glass, another room, this one gloomy and decked out with neon strips, winking recording equipment and a clock showing how much longer the suspect can be held. There’s also a linking corridor containing a couple of vending machines and a metal staircase. It doesn’t look like any police station I’ve ever seen but that’s probably because it’s all filmed in Madrid.
So far, so homogenous. But what's fascinating is how political and cultural differences play out across four separate iterations of the same idea. Criminal France opened with an episode re-living the Bataclan terrorist attacks. Criminal Germany was straight into an exhumation of the past courtesy of a story centred on East Berlin immediately after reunification. Criminal Spain presented us with a suspect who looked and sounded like she had just walked out of a film by Pedro Almodovar. All very different in theme and tone yet virtually identical in style and format.
The big name catch in Criminal UK was David Tennant, who featured in episode one. As it opened Dr Edgar Fallon (Tennant) was being questioned by detective Tony Myerscough (Lee Ingleby) about the murder of his 14-year-old stepdaughter – questioned as in they fired accusations at him which he answered with “No comment”. It would be 20 minutes before he said more. Tennant does creepy as well as he does sleazy, avuncular and righteous and he rotated through all four as the balance of power in the room shifted from cop to suspect and back. When he did finally open up, with the clock running down, the stakes rose even higher.
Coming and going or looking on from the observation booth were Myerscough’s police colleagues Natalie Hobbs (Katherine Kelly), Vanessa Warren (Line Of Duty’s Rochenda Sandall), Hugo Duffy (Mark Stanley) and Paul Otager (Nicholas Pinnock), very different personalities whose relationships deepened as the three-part anthology progressed.
The script wasn’t entirely without its wince-inducing moments – some hackneyed dialogue, some clumsy foreshadowing, some clumsier exposition – but when it was up to speed, it really flew. Taken as a multi-lingual whole, Criminal gives the age of international co-productions and cash-rich streaming platforms perhaps its first example of joined up television.
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