Apple TV ‘Criminal Record’ Season 2 Episode 5 Review - A Quiet Reminder that Nobody Sleeps Well Anymore

By episode five of Criminal Record season two, I’ve come to accept a simple truth: this show genuinely believes stress is a public service. Not action-movie stress. Not “run through an exploding warehouse while yelling into radios” stress. No, Criminal Record specializes in a much nastier variety—the kind where two people sit quietly across a table discussing procedure. At the same time, everyone involved slowly realizes the situation is morally collapsing in real time. “Duty of Care” might be the clearest example of that yet. And honestly? It’s excellent. Not flawless. Not quite as relentlessly gripping as “Safe,” and occasionally a little too comfortable lingering in procedural gloom. But as a character-driven hour of television about power, responsibility, institutional compromise, and the terrifying reality that “good intentions” rarely survive contact with counterterrorism operations, this episode works extremely well.

What impressed me most is how confident the writing has become this season. Earlier episodes were still balancing old-case investigation drama with newer political thriller territory. “Duty of Care” fully commits to the latter without losing the emotional intimacy that makes the series work in the first place. Everything feels tighter now. More dangerous. More personal. And significantly more exhausted. At the center of the episode, once again, is DS June Lenker, played brilliantly by Cush Jumbo, and this may quietly be one of her strongest performances of the season. Not because June gets dramatic speeches. Not because she suddenly becomes reckless. Not because the show turns her into a procedural superhero. Quite the opposite.

“Duty of Care” works because June spends most of the episode trying desperately to remain functional while realizing the people around her are becoming increasingly comfortable treating human beings like operational assets. And Cush Jumbo plays that emotional tension beautifully. June has always been the moral center of Criminal Record, but what makes her compelling is that she’s never naïve. She understands policing. She understands compromise. She understands that institutions survive partly by forcing individuals to rationalize impossible situations. What she’s struggling with now is something harder: At what point does understanding become participation?

That question hangs over almost every scene in the episode, and Jumbo handles it with incredible restraint. Her silences here are phenomenal. There’s one briefing-room scene where June says almost nothing while several senior officers calmly discuss collateral risk, informant management, and acceptable operational fallout. I swear you can physically see her faith in the system deteriorating by the second. That’s acting. Then there’s DCI Daniel Hegarty, played once again with terrifying precision by Peter Capaldi, who continues delivering one of the best television performances currently airing anywhere. And what makes Hegarty so fascinating in “Duty of Care” is that the episode never fully lets you decide whether he’s protecting people… or simply protecting outcomes.

Capaldi is extraordinary at this kind of ambiguity. He never overplays authority. He never raises his voice unless necessary. He doesn’t need to. At this point, Hegarty can create tension simply by asking someone if they’re “all right.” And in this episode, nearly everybody clearly is not. What I love about Capaldi’s performance this season is how deeply tired Hegarty feels. Not weak. Not defeated. Just emotionally worn down by decades of making decisions that probably sounded reasonable in briefing rooms and terrible in hindsight.

There’s a scene midway through the episode involving Billy Fielding that perfectly captures this. Hegarty is trying to maintain operational control, maintain trust, maintain authority, and maintain the illusion that everything happening is still ethically manageable. You can tell that even he barely believes it anymore. That complexity is what keeps the character so compelling.

Luther Ford continues doing excellent work as Billy, who increasingly feels less like an informant and more like a pressure point everyone is pretending won’t explode. Billy’s instability has always been part of the operation, but “Duty of Care” finally forces the show to confront what that actually means in human terms. Using vulnerable people is easy to justify strategically. Much harder emotionally. And the episode digs into that beautifully.

Luke Pasqualino also gets stronger material here as JP Brownlee, whose position inside the investigation becomes increasingly uncomfortable. JP has spent most of the season balancing loyalty, ambition, and survival, and this episode finally starts forcing him to recognize that those things may no longer coexist peacefully. There’s a particularly strong exchange between JP and June where neither character fully says what they mean, yet both clearly understand the conversation is really about accountability. That’s the kind of writing Criminal Record excels at. Nobody speaks in monologues. Nobody announces themes. People just talk like intelligent professionals, trying not to self-destruct at work emotionally.

Visually, “Duty of Care” continues the show’s understated brilliance. Director Joelle Mae David understands that institutional thrillers don’t need flashy cinematography to feel oppressive. Fluorescent lighting, cramped offices, surveillance rooms, empty corridors, and exhausted faces do most of the work here. And it works. The interview-room scenes are especially effective this week. The framing feels tighter, more claustrophobic, as though everyone is slowly running out of emotional oxygen. The sound design deserves praise, too. Radio chatter, distant sirens, office hums, footsteps in concrete corridors, muffled panic during operational sequences—nothing is exaggerated, which somehow makes everything feel more stressful. At several points, I realized I was physically leaning forward. That’s usually a good sign.

The writing throughout the episode is excellent, particularly when it comes to institutional language. One of Criminal Record’s greatest strengths is how often characters discuss horrifying situations using calm, professional terminology. “Asset management.” “Risk mitigation.” “Operational necessity.” The more polite the phrasing becomes… The worse the situation usually is. And “Duty of Care” understands that dynamic perfectly.

What impressed me most, though, is how the episode interrogates responsibility. Not legal responsibility. Not procedural responsibility. Moral responsibility. Who owns the consequences once an operation starts spiraling? Who gets protected? Who gets sacrificed? And who quietly signs paperwork pretending those are different things? That’s fascinating territory. And this episode explores it with real intelligence.

The pacing occasionally becomes a little too committed to procedural realism. I appreciate slow-burn tension. I love dialogue-heavy thrillers. But there are stretches here—particularly in the middle—where operational logistics, surveillance updates, and tactical discussions slightly overstay their welcome. Not enough to lose momentum. But enough that I briefly became aware of the runtime.

There’s also one secondary subplot involving departmental politics that still feels slightly less compelling than the central bombing investigation. I understand why it matters structurally, and I’m sure it will become more important later in the season, but every time the episode shifted toward those scenes, I found myself wanting to get back to June, Hegarty, and Billy. That’s less a failure of the subplot and more a compliment to how strong the main material is. And one late operational development arrives with timing so perfectly disastrous that I raised one respectful eyebrow. Narratively, the universe was being extremely cooperative with the writers this week.

Still, those complaints feel relatively small in an episode doing so much right. Because what “Duty of Care” understands better than most police thrillers is that institutions rarely collapse dramatically. Usually, they erode quietly. Through compromises. Through exhaustion. Through intelligent people convincing themselves they still have control. That’s much scarier. And Criminal Record knows it.

By the time the credits rolled, I wasn’t thinking about bomb plots, informants, or operational success rates. I was thinking about June Lenker. About how long someone can stay morally functional inside systems designed around emotional compartmentalization. That’s great television. And “Duty of Care” is another reminder that Criminal Record remains one of the smartest, sharpest, and most emotionally exhausting crime dramas currently airing. It occasionally lingers a little too long in procedural detail, and one or two side threads still feel less urgent than the core investigation, but when nearly everything else is operating at this level… Those complaints feel very small.

Final Score- [7.5/10]