‘Criminal Record’ Season 2, Episode 1 Recap – Plucked From the Headlines

Realism is a funny word, isn’t it? Most of the time, it doesn’t really mean anything. A realistic war movie, for instance, would give you trench foot and PTSD, and nobody really wants that, even if they claim to. Criminal Record aspires to realism all the same. It’s shot almost entirely on location instead of on soundstages, and looks all the better for it. Cush Jumbo and Peter Capaldi famously don’t rehearse together, so their dialogue feels more authentic. And given the immediate plucked-from-the-headlines plot of Season 2, which opens in Episode 1, “Is It Him?”, with a far-right counter-protest mob storming a rally against Western imperialism and stabbing a 15-year-old Asian boy to death for the crime of — checks notes — being Asian, it’s clear that this latest outing is striving for topicality in its plot, too.

But the hook of this show is the testy relationship between DI June Lenker and DCI Daniel Hegarty, which is very much made for TV. Doing the bracingly current “this could quite easily happen” angle at the same time as having June and Hegarty verbally spar over cagey Intelligence operations involving prison escapees infiltrating far-right extremist groups feels a bit like trying to have your cake and eat it, too, which is a) an expression I’ve never understood — why wouldn’t you want to eat a cake that you have? — and b) seems like it’s going to be the biggest problem that this follow-up season has to deal with.

It helps that Criminal Record is exceedingly well made. Look at the opening of Season 2’s premiere as an example. June is monitoring that aforementioned rally, which is becoming dangerously close to a call to arms against the West. The invective is being translated in real-time by another officer, who is passing it on to a control room whose job is to determine whether it crosses a legal threshold. While this is going on, a mob of very angry white dudes is trying to break down the police barricade so they can set about the protestors with bricks and hammers. Needless to say, just as June is instructed to arrest the speaker, the counter-protestors break through, and a lot of awful violence erupts, including a 15-year-old boy named Rohaan being stabbed to death.

This is quite the opening. It’s effectively tense and chaotic and manages to highlight a lot of the difficulties of modern policework, most notably the extremely fine lines between action and inaction, free expression and incitement, concerned citizens and racist thugs. It’s the best scene of the premiere and works mightily well as a mission statement, perhaps because it isn’t complicated by June and Hegarty’s fractious dynamic.

The police’s working theory is that the Nailsworth Street rally was infiltrated at the eleventh hour by a small cell of extremists, but they aren’t making any progress in proving it, which is leading to a combustible public sentiment around the police, protestors, and counter-protestors. For her part, June is struggling to process what she saw. She attempts to mourn with Rohaan’s family but is asked to leave, and she becomes fixated on a split-second glimpse she caught of one of the attackers when his balaclava was pulled down. She clearly recognised him, but initially can’t remember where from.

The thug turns out to be Billy Fielding, who, six years prior, had murdered his girlfriend, Cerys Jones, and been sentenced to 17 years in prison for the crime. June is passingly familiar with Cerys’s mother, Ashley, from her time at a refuge, so she pays her a visit at her flat, which is flooded from a bath left running while Ashley lounges in a drug- (or drink, it’s a little unclear) induced daze. After vomiting her lungs up, Ashley vaguely recognises June and goes with her to the hospital for some help, but during the journey, June tries to subtly press her for information about what happened to Billy. Ashley recognises what’s happening and becomes extremely distressed about it, but she bounces back just as fast, almost as if the encounter never happened. It isn’t entirely clear what’s up with Ashley, but some combination of substance misuse and trauma has left her barely functional.

Cush Jumbo in Criminal Record Season 2 | Image via Apple TV

June does manage to extract the name of the prison where Billy was sent, though, so she tries to book a visit with him. This is where Criminal Record Season 2, Episode 1 starts to fold Hegarty into the season’s plot. June is unable to visit Billy because he has apparently been transferred, a process which hasn’t been officially documented, thanks to an apparent safeguarding issue. This is also highly unusual.

June asking questions about Billy attracts the attention of Hegarty, who invites her to meet with him. He’s working for Intelligence now, and he confirms that it was indeed Billy at the rally. He even has clearer photos. Billy apparently escaped from prison by hiding beneath a catering truck, but his absence is being covered up for the sake of optics. Two disastrous policing outcomes in the span of a couple of days would be terrible for public perception, so Hegarty has been brought in for “analytic support”, which in other words means bringing Billy in and keeping the whole thing hush-hush.

Thus, Hegarty has an offer for June. If she helps him run Billy down, he’ll allow her to interview him about Suffolk Square, which will get her closer to finding out who stabbed Rohaan. It’s worth thinking about.

That night, Billy breaks into Ashley’s flat and does a runner when she screams, which alerts Hegarty’s team, who’re posted watching the place. A chase breaks out, with one of Hegarty’s associates chasing Billy along the canal. When Billy skips across, the officer attempts to follow, slips, brains himself on a lock gate and falls face down into the water. Billy dives in and drags him to shore, where Hegarty finally catches up. Or “Dan”, as Billy calls him, since they clearly know each other.

There’s your big twist, then, though it seems fairly predictable. I could be wrong here, but I suspect Hegarty might have spirited Billy out of jail in order to use him as an undercover agent to get close to someone named Cosmo Thompson, whom we know Hegarty is looking for, and whom I suspect may well be a far-right agitator, perhaps in charge of the cell that infiltrated the counter-protestors ahead of the rally. That could easily change, of course, but it’s definitely the feeling I’m getting. Time will tell.