"Between us and Paw Patrol, it’s going to be a better world": Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo talk fighting the far-right in season two of Criminal Record
Rival detectives taking on London's worst criminals? No trouble for Cush and Capaldi.
As scary as the world can be and as much escapism as we usually demand from TV shows, sometimes a good crime drama just hits the spot. Melt away the tension from your work day with some life-or-death backstabbing world-corrupting on-screen crime. Perfect.
One of the shows that does this to perfection is Criminal Record, the Apple TV slow-burn thriller set in a tumultuous London, starring Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo. After a hit first season which wrapped in February 2024, the duo are back for a second act, with just as much intrigue, suspicion, and bloody good acting.
Season 2 finds Capaldi’s Detective Chief Inspector Daniel Hegarty and Jumbo’s Detective Sergeant June Lenker once again teaming up solve a heart-pounding case with potentially dire consequences. When a young man is stabbed to death at a political rally, rival police officers Lenker and Hegarty are forced into an uneasy alliance. But what starts as a hunt for a murderer escalates into an undercover operation to foil a Far-Right bomb plot in the heart of London.
With the season now streaming and weekly episodes landing every Wednesday, we caught up with Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo to hear about filming secrets, old alliances, and which other fictional detectives they'd team up with.
Shortlist: Criminal Record is a fantastic show, but it's quite an intense one... It always takes me a while to get to through as I have to watch a sort of palette cleanser show afterwards like a 20 minute sitcom episode to calm down afterwards. Do you have to do the same after watching crime shows or during filming?
Peter Capaldi: I like a crime show, I’m loving Task at the moment, but if we’re watching a couple of episodes of that – I say "we" like me and Cush watch it together!
Cush Jumbo: Watching it together on the sofa… No, we don’t! I can’t watch drama when we’re filming – I need something that’s lighter on my brain. Something that will wash me clean like pineapple sorbet, like Real Housewives, a bit of reality TV.
PC: I’ll watch two hours of crime and then I’ll have a balming – at the moment it’s Rooster, or a smart comedy like Shrinking, so I can go to sleep happy.
How much of the script do you see ahead of time? Do they ever hold parts back so it feels like a surprise to you both?
PC: It's not so much they deliberately hold things back but I think people outside don’t realise that a show is only greenlit some months before it’s due to go out, so there’s not enough time to write all the scripts, but the story is there.
CJ: We were able to develop it with Paul [Rutman, show runner] and Elaine [Collins, Executive producer] before so we know the arc, but even up to the day we shoot we can still be discussing angles and dialogue. But we know the bullet points.
So no turning the page and going "No way!"
CJ: "Wait, I lose my leg?!" No, luckily none of that.
No Joey Tribbianni-esque "I get shoved down an elevator shaft?!"
CJ: What a reference! That's such a good episode.
Your characters (DCI Hegarty and DS Lenker) make a great detective duo on screen, but if you had to team up with another famous detective from literary or TV history, who would you pick?
PC: I would have Cagney or Lacey –
CJ: Yes! We’d do well with them. If we teamed up as a four, so it was us two and those two. Or Inspector Gadget maybe? We’ve got good skills between us, but we don’t have someone with gadgets.
PC: Paw Patrol?
CJ: Yes! Someone with cute eyes – we need pieces we’re missing from the team. Plus your grandkids would love it if we teamed up with Paw Patrol.
Speaking of being detectives, if you were police officers IRL for the day and you could arrest someone for something petty, what would you pick?
PC: I think it would be the overlords of coffee companies who don’t provide hot coffee anymore and you have to ask for extra hot coffee just to get hot coffee –
CJ: And you always have to give them your name – they never get mine right! Mine would be vaping indoors or on trains. And also I’d like to be the rudeness police – like people who don’t say please and thank you to wait staff, people who are demanding… Like with coffee, saying it’s not hot enough. Between us and Paw Patrol, it’s going to be a better world...
Your characters Hegarty and Lenker are coming back together in season two, teaming back up again to solve crime. If you had to team up with an old colleague, who would you love to do another project with?
PC: We’ve worked with lovely people!
CJ: Aw, so many lovely people... I’ll try and go as close to Peter Capaldi as possible so I’ll pick another Scottish Doctor Who and I’ll go back to David Tennant. Not as funny, not as talented… drinks cold coffee…
PC: Cush is irreplaceable, not sure I can pick anyone else.
Finally, as you are both Detectives in Criminal Record, are there any sort of mundane mysteries you'd like to solve? What are some (slightly boring) everyday things that confuse you?
PC: [laughing] I just walk through life confused. Texts, Whatsapp, emails – they’re confusing. Air conditioning in hotel rooms, I find that confusing, I can never get it to work.
CJ: Same, I mainly just struggle with day to day stuff like: where’s that thing I just put there? Where’s my phone is the most mundane one, and it always turns out that it was just me that left it somewhere…
You can stream the first episodes of Criminal Record season two on Apple TV, with further episodes dropping weekly every Wednesday until June 22nd.
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