There are a lot of cop shows. Too many, really. But Criminal Record, Apple TV+’s latest prestige drama, seems hellbent on not being one of the forgettable ones. Set in a vividly real London and starring Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo, it’s part whodunnit, part institutional reckoning, and part slow-burn character study where no one gets out clean. Especially not Tom Moutchi’s Errol Mathis, who spends most of the show doing time for a crime that… well, you’ll see.
“I’ve always liked crime dramas,” Capaldi says, like someone casually admitting he’s always enjoyed breathing. “But this one had more. Misogyny, racism, the systems that create those things—it’s not just a murder show.” Playing DCI Daniel Hegarty, Capaldi is cagey and stoic, less your typical shouty TV detective and more a man trying to outlive his own cover story. “He’s veiled,” Capaldi says. “That was new for me. Usually I play someone who throws chairs or jokes or both. This guy hides everything.”
Hegarty is the old guard, and he wears it like a trench coat: heavy, outdated, possibly bulletproof. “I can’t help being the representation of the past,” Capaldi deadpans. “I was born in the 1950s. What am I gonna do?” He speaks of London like a living character—diverse, vibrant, charming, but with a grimy undercurrent. “He’s as old as London,” he says of Hegarty. “He knows the city because he’s been dealing with it professionally for decades.”
If Capaldi is the haunted relic of the system, Moutchi’s Errol is the collateral damage. Wrongfully imprisoned (or is he?), he spends the series folding in on himself like a man carrying a bomb in his chest. “Even me, being a young Black man,” Moutchi says, “there are moments where you want to say something, but no one’s ever given you the language, or the space. Errol’s holding it all in. Playing him… I felt constipated.”
Criminal Record doesn’t come with easy morality. Everyone’s complicit, everyone’s compromised. Even the city seems to shrink in on itself, like it's choking on its own history. “We’re talking about divided London,” Capaldi notes. “But this version isn’t Big Ben and the Queen’s Guard. It’s the one we actually know.”
And while both actors bring gravity, they also bring rhythm. Literally. Both have musical backgrounds—Moutchi as an actual recording artist, Capaldi as a dabbler in skiffle and rockabilly. “I just play around,” Capaldi shrugs. “I don’t want the obligations of being a professional musician. I just like getting into the zone. Sometimes I play tracks before scenes to get there.” Moutchi laughs: “Music actually gets me out of the zone. Like, when I need to get back to my regular life, music is what helps me land.”
For Moutchi, the show gave him something that goes beyond acting credits: purpose. “You hear these stories in real life, and you feel helpless,” he says. “To get a script like this, where maybe you change someone’s mind… that felt like doing my part.”
It’s a smart, shadowy, unsettling show—the kind that doesn’t pat itself on the back for being ‘timely’ because it knows the rot runs too deep for that. There are no heroic speeches or perfect takedowns. Just people in a system trying not to lose what’s left of their humanity.
And that, Capaldi admits, is what made the gig so rewarding. “He’s not finished,” he says of his character. “There’s more to him. I liked that. He’s still growing. Still unraveling.”
Aren’t we all.
Watch the interview above and then check out the trailer below.
