Netflix is making a new crime anthology, and it will star David Tennant and Hayley Atwell, among others. The crime series will be called Criminal and will add yet another string to the bow of Netflix originals.
EW reports that Criminal is a new Netflix Original Series that is highly experimental. Located in four countries – France, Spain, Germany and the UK – the entire series is set in police interrogation rooms. The series will comprise of twelve episodes, with three episodes set aside for each country and will be multi-lingual. David Tennant and Hayley Atwell will head the UK episodes. Each country involved in this production will see writers, directors and actors from their retrospective regions. In terms of the UK episodes, George Kay (Killing Eve) and Jim Field Smith (She’s Out Of My League) will be providing the writing talent. The recently released trailer gives us a flavor of what we can expect from the series, with its mugshots and somewhat of a sinister, yet intriguing feel. While the release date hasn’t yet been given, the trailer reports that Criminal is due to drop this autumn.
Criminal will be one of the latest Netflix Original Series to air in 2019. It’s no secret that the war is on in the battle of the streaming giants, as well as across other networks and platforms, with demand for quality programming becoming ever more present and the power in the hands of the viewer now more than ever. Criminal joins Netflix originals such as Mindhunter, as well as a host of foreign language dramas such as Bordertown and Dark, that are also very popular, fresh off the back of the Scandinavian and European noir trend. With Criminal experimenting with setting both in terms of scene choice and location, it seems that Netflix are now keen to up the stakes in terms of what they can deliver. Viewers of popular BBC police drama Line of Duty will be familiar with long interrogations scenes, a technique that isn’t widely used as it can slow down the pace of the action and lose the viewers attention. It’s yet to be seen how it will be used in the context of this new series though, although with the whole episodes set in interrogation rooms it certainly creates interest from the start.
With crime dramas, noir and police procedurals not going anywhere soon, it seems that Criminal will almost certainly find a fan base with viewers. Add to that actors such as David Tennant and Hayley Atwell, as well as writing talent from hit shows like Killing Eve, and it looks like this might be a show to look out for. Will it be groundbreaking in its experimentalism? We’ll have to wait and see.
Source: EW
