Criminal S2: What the Must Watch reviewers think

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows. 

This week, Scott Bryan and Hayley Campbell share their thoughts on season 2 of Criminal on Netflix. Katherine Kelly and Lee Ingleby star as investigators questioning suspects accused of grievous crimes until the truth comes to life. 

Have you been watching it? What did you think? Leave your comments below...

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Hayley says: "It's got that Alan Bennett monologue formula thing"

"It’s half a Must Watch — I’d give it half a point. We all know I love depressing conversations in dark rooms, and this is essentially just entirely that, so from the start this show has a lot to like about it.

"It’s got that Alan Bennett monologue formula thing where there’s a twist and you know it’s coming and everyone will be in a different emotional place by the end. It’s intense and it’s a great place for actors to luxuriate in their craft, and since the location never changes it's a lot like theatre. Sometimes it can be a perfect little short film — like the David Tennant episode in the first series — while others work less well.

"My problem with it is that once you know the formula you can guess what the twist is within the first two minutes of the set-up, and then it takes another 40 minutes to get to the end, which is inevitably what you guessed because you know the formula. There’s a lot of heavy silences and a lot of acting and all the while you’re going ‘I just wanna know if the thing I thought was happening is actually happening!’"

Scott says: "It's sort of the cat and mouse game"

"What if I also take it as a half? I’ll have the must and Hayley can have the watch. It’s sort of the cat and mouse game trying to work out which person is on which side and whether they’re going to flip but also just the amount of evidence against them.

"I do have a problem though and I don’t want to go into too much detail because it could be a spoiler. I do have an issue with the second episode, the one with Kit Harrington, because the story line is somebody being accused of a serious sexual assault. Then it goes into this whole theory about whether it was false, whether the person made it up and I think it’s important to point out that false allegations are rare. At the same time only 1% of actual rape accusations lead to a charge, according to The Guardian.

"Yet on TV it has been stereotyped so many times that a woman has made up a false allegation, or that this person’s got an ulterior motive’ It sort of adds to the theory that they’re making it all up, that they want to climb the career ladder. I found that second episode added to that stereotype unfortunately.

"Unhelpfully they didn’t point out that while such things have happened it’s a minority of cases, that what happened in the drama was rare and that made me very frustrated."

Criminal S2 is available now on Netflix.

Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening from BBC Sounds, or through your podcast app.

This week, the team also review 'Ghosts' series 2 on BBC One and 'The Third Day' on Sky Atlantic.

Click here to listen to the latest episode.