Critic Reviews
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All told, Criminal plays well for a specific group. Fans of crime dramas will have fun sinking their teeth into every episode as they get a feel for the different kinds of procedures deployed to take down a suspect depending on the country they’re in. But be warned: This is not a bingeable show. Spend too much time with Criminal and you risk getting bored stiff.
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Sometimes the idea for a series is better than the execution. ... The repetition of the will-the-suspect-break idea begins to nag. Worse, and perhaps this is an American-based red flag, the legal counsel in all four countries leaves a lot to be desired. ... Criminal is an interesting if not necessarily original idea, and you can see the appeal for Netflix, but viewers are likely to want something more expansive.
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Netflix’s Criminal is a thought experiment that’s been turned into a TV show. ... Fans of formal experiments will eat the show up — at least at first. At a certain point, though, the lack of narrative and visual variety starts to leach away the novelty.
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Criminal’s two sides, interrogator and interrogatee, simply don’t have the characterization or passion to keep its hyper-realistic war waging. The actors do their best with their scripts, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-esque twists answer each too-subtle premise. A tactical disconnect hamstrings a competent cast and makes each case’s resolution feel as transparent as the right side of the one-way glass.
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Refusing to deviate from its formula except in minor ways, it’s a cat-and-mouse game that never lets the latter escape the clutches of the former—a situation that, in the final tally, results in monotony, and winds up squandering a host of great individual performances from David Tennant, Haley Atwell, Jérémie Renier and the incomparable Nina Hoss.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 5 out of 9
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Mixed: 2 out of 9
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Negative: 2 out of 9
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Jan 7, 2021This show works due to good acting and fine writing. Simple yet highly effective.
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Oct 20, 2020Love this, just brilliant, great acting + good script = great series, loved it, no CG, no hooplas, no extra colors,.....just great acting
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Oct 28, 2019The British one is great. The others.... Not as great. Plots to writing to acting... Good British episodes. Others.... Not.