Jim Loach

Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo keep the pressure on each other in Criminal Record (2024), and Jim Loach's direction serves that contest well. The series is tense and absorbing, with institutional racism central to what it has to say. We were gripped by the struggle between its leads, which gives the programme a reason to keep watching beyond the importance of its subject. Loach is most persuasive in this sort of character-led drama. His interest is in how people respond to difficult circumstances, an approach that also guides his occasional feature work.

He began directing in British television drama, with episodes of Coronation Street (2000), followed by work on Shameless and Bad Girls. His feature debut, Oranges and Sunshine (2010), dramatises the British child migration scandal. Rona Munro wrote the screenplay, and Emily Watson stars. The film's restrained treatment matters with material that could so easily be made sentimental. The emphasis stays on the people affected, rather than on telling an audience how it ought to feel about what happened to them.

He continued to work chiefly in television, directing episodes of Victoria (2016) and working on Save Me (2018). His second feature, Measure of a Man (2018), moved to an American-set coming-of-age story adapted from a novel. Its mixed reviews included complaints about unevenness and excessive nostalgia.

Our reservation about Criminal Record concerns how it divides its attention. Some secondary stories weaken the pressure, and the quality of the central pairing makes those distractions more noticeable. We would have preferred less time away from the leads. Nor should its success be claimed for a director alone: Capaldi and Jumbo are the chief reason we rated the series so highly. Start there, with some patience for the subplots.