British screenwriter Paul Rutman, with experience in crime fiction thanks to his work on series such as Lewis and Vera, understands a television maxim: if you want to sell a new case to the public, you first have to find a way to differentiate it from the hundreds that viewers have seen before. In Criminal History, his new creation, he has an incentive: to confront two police officers working with opposite objectives in the same old murder case.
The story begins with a call to the emergency service. One woman, who prefers to remain anonymous, explains that she fears for her life. Her current partner has threatened to kill her and she believes him: on more than one occasion she has explained to him that she has already killed one of his girlfriends before, with stab wounds, a crime for which an innocent man serves a sentence in prison. . But, before the police officers can approach the telephone booth from which she was calling to help her, the witness has disappeared.
Upon hearing this call, Detective June Lenker begins to investigate the information offered by the woman. She takes into account the area, the length of the sentence mentioned and the modus operandi of the murder. She wants to understand who could be in prison for a crime she didn’t commit. Her only problem is that, when she discovers that he is a black person like her, she also begins to suspect that the detective who put her in prison, Daniel Hegarty, has no plans to help her right the wrong, if she does. committed.
In his letter of introduction, the two episodes released this Wednesday on Apple TV, Paul Rutman offers two promising assets: two detectives who, right off the bat, demonstrate that they are not the least bit stupid, nor do they need to feign sympathy for anyone. They see it as an obstacle in the way. Peter Capaldi constructs a disturbing portrait with Hegarty, with the camera taking advantage of his angular face to construct a character of the old guard: it is suggested that his gang had a particular modus operandi but, at the moment, it is unknown to what extent their practices were immoral.
Lenker, on the other hand, shows empathy with whoever she considers requires it but she also does not feel the need to be nice while she lets herself be carried away by her sniffing instinct. She is pure determination, which often translates into reckless impatience, and she finds in Cush Jumbo (The Good Fight) the magnetic presence that the character demands. And, between Hegarty and Lenker, a rivalry is established not only for a case but for two ways of seeking justice in a society that, since he was formed, has evolved and has had to examine its conscience about its behavior.
This determination by Lenker, in fact, allows Criminal History not to sink (on an emotional level) into the themes it addresses around indifference towards domestic violence, police cynicism that only seeks to close cases, cultural contrast, the use of race as a weapon and it even has a very interesting subplot in the background: the relationship between Lenker and his current partner, a psychiatrist, who seems to mask a certain sexist condescension under his supposed professionalism.