*Premise spoilers.*
With Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, and Matt Smith, there’s a lot of filmography for me to get to—either things I’ve never seen before or stuff to revisit from an Other Doctor Lives lens. But since I did a pre-regeneration crash course for Peter Capaldi, Jodie Whittaker, and now Ncuti Gatwa, I’ve already seen most of what there is to see from them. So I’m always grateful to see that one of them has been in something new. I’m buckling up for this new Apple TV series costarring Peter Capaldi!
When Detective Sergeant June Lenker is asked to review the recording of an emergency call, she gets more than she bargained for. The caller refused to identify herself for the operator and left the call before police could reach her, and June tries to use the recording and CCTV footage to locate her. But during the call, where the woman says that her boyfriend is threatening to kill her, she also says he claims responsibility for a murder that someone else is in jail for. June takes this to Chief Detective Inspector Daniel Hegarty, who was the one to put the suspect away all those years ago, but her concerns that the wrong man may have gone to prison put a major target on her back at work.
These days, I’m always a little hesitant to check out a new crime/policing show, because copaganda is a heady drug. But while this show still has me a bit on edge, it helps that it’s specifically about investigating police injustice. Yes, the protagonist is a cop, but she’s also a Black woman who recognizes that she doesn’t quite fit in in her department, and so far, the other helpful characters we’ve seen with integrity are also women of color. And already, it seems unlikely that this show is going to shake out to being about “one bad apple.” If nothing else, this particular bad apple has been able to rise through the ranks and now wields a lot of power, which means the department as a whole becomes an apparatus he can use to try to silence June. But we’ll see where they go with it.
Some familiar faces of note here. Cush Jumbo stars as June—she and Capaldi worked together on series 3 of Torchwood, where she played Lois. We get an appearance from the always-good Zoë Wanamaker as her mom, and Stephen Campbell Moore (forever on my “good” list from Bright Young Things) plays her boyfriend/husband(?) Leo. There’s also a quick appearance from Dean Lennox Kelley. I’ve seen Kelley in many things—most recently, he was Pekka Rollins on Shadow and Bone, and he guest starred as William Shakespeare on Doctor Who—but I’ll always remember him best as Kev from the original Shameless.
Capaldi plays DCI Hegarty, who, let’s just say, is wildly unlikely to turn out to be a good guy. At the start of the episode, he’s doing a different gig: serving double duty as chauffeur and personal protection for a couple of VIPs. When they discover that he’s a police officer, his passengers pester him for juicy details about shocking cases, and throughout the whole scene, there’s something creepy about the way Hegarty watches the people out on the sidewalk. You get the sense that he’s automatically scanning the area for potential threats, and most of the people who catch his eye are Black.
If the opening scene gives off undertones of ick, Hegarty’s first meeting with June sets off alarm bells. He’s friendly and inviting when she shows up at his office, but as she broaches the subject that he may have been behind a wrongful conviction, we immediately see his back go up. As unsavory as the character seems, Capaldi does an excellent job in this scene. He’s edgy but still acting mostly in control. He has an answer for everything June has to say, quick to dismiss whatever concerns she may have. He turns things around on her by highlighting her short tenure in CID, and he throws out more than one telling comment that reflect his views on the matter—when June points that his murder suspect retracted his initial confession, Hegarty scoffs, “Retracted. Yeah, they all do that when you get them in a room with a defense lawyer.”
So far, Capaldi is unsettling and a little creepy in the role, but in a very bureaucratic way. I expect he’ll be excellent here, and I hope the story takes us to some good places.
Accent Watch
Scottish.
Recommend?
In General – Maybe. Too early to say for sure—to quote Sunday in the Park with George, “Everything depends on execution.”
Peter Capaldi – Probably. I’ll have more to say at the end of the season, but this is shaping up to be a strong performance.
Warnings
Violence (including domestic abuse,) language, and strong thematic elements.
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