The Capture

A complex murder mystery that will make you wonder how safe you really are while under constant surveillance from CCTV cameras.

As engrossing the show is in its demonstration of how little the public knows about the extent it’s being surveilled, the final explanation of the crime as it arrives in episode five, titled “A Pilgrim Of Justice,” feels quite contrived. ... Grainger’s work as Rachel gets better with every episode, but the season belongs to Callum Turner. He churns out an evocative, admirable performance as Shaun

It’s a fast-paced story that reminded me, in its propulsive energy, of the 2018 British thriller “Bodyguard” starring Richard Madden. The plot builds and its story lines intersect nicely, even if it could have been cut back an episode to be a little tighter. For a night or two of bingeing, you could do a lot worse. ... Turner is gripping, as is Holliday Grainger.

Terrifically twisty and intensely suspenseful. [20 Jul - 2 Aug 2020, p.9]

Hits the points that make British conspiracy thrillers such tasty candy, balancing the convoluted or unconvincing elements of its plot with homey detail and naturalistic performances by actors you wish would invite you over for dinner sometime.

The Capture doesn’t quite deliver the seamless resolution its first five episodes deserve. ... Still, this is the rare thriller that is not just smart and gripping, but also deeply engaged with our bizarre, often terrifying present. And it’s easily the best original show you’ll find on Peacock.

“The Capture” may be a suspenseful cop drama, but the writing never lionizes the detectives, or those who most use the technology.

The series has a “Bodyguard”-like ability to deliver thrilling reversals grounded in truths of characters and their situations. Grainger, a TV veteran, sells the grit of a detective as well as her abject confusion over the case’s unfamiliarity. ... Elegant little series.

Despite all of the holes in writer/director Ben Chanan’s script, I still want to know where Hannah Roberts is, whether she is alive and whether Emery has been framed for her disappearance, or did it without realising he is doing it.

This is a slick and entertaining if sometimes overly complicated conspiracy thriller in the vein of “24” that takes the concept of Fake News to mind-bending levels.

The conspiracy aspects of The Capture are intriguing enough to keep us watching. We just hope we don’t get manipulated as much as we did during the first episode.

A reasonably entertaining and well-constructed (at least in its early episodes) example of a classic style of British television conspiracy thriller, most recently seen in “Bodyguard” on BBC and Netflix.

The series, from Ben Chanan, manages to feel zeitgeisty, its particular fascination lending an otherwise fairly run-of-the-mill detective series the anxious tingle of the here-and-now. Complementing that timeliness are the performances.

A bit convoluted, but for aficionados of British crime drama, reasonably entertaining.

It's a twisty journey that starts as a grounded exploration of the Panopticon-esque paranoia of the British surveillance state. That it eventually becomes something convoluted and vaguely silly is a disappointment, but the six hour-long episodes at least kept me curious throughout.

The question of what she has seen is the carrot that dangles before us, pulling us through the rest of an hour that without it would threaten to be very lacklustre indeed.

A conspiracy thriller, this 2019 British import offers a whiplash-inducing premiere that goes from, “This is a ridiculous investigation that appears to lack a crime” to “How is that possible?”

A newer element of our surveillance state, social media, is mentioned obligatorily but is barely explored. The Capture sucks the juice out of its pop-cultural reference points, failing to mine our current nightmares on its own terms.