--- title: "Criminal Justice" year: 2008 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/criminal-justice" fi1m_id: "criminal-justice" imdb_id: "tt1188927" tmdb_id: 7460 wikidata_id: "Q18558892" fi1m_score: 85 critics_reviews: 1 published: "2026-10-07T15:03:01.102616+00:00" updated: "2026-10-07T15:03:01.431559+00:00" region: "SE" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Criminal Justice (2008) Created by Peter Moffat · 1h 00m · Crime, Drama ## Identity Criminal Justice - **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/criminal-justice - **Type:** Series - **Fi1m ID:** criminal-justice - **IMDb ID:** tt1188927 - **TMDB ID:** 7460 - **Wikidata ID:** Q18558892 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1188927/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/7460, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18558892 **Fi1m score: 85** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* One night he cannot account for, and by breakfast everyone in the building has decided who he is > Peter Moffat’s five-part drama follows one young man from a police interview room to a remand cell and shows, with rare patience, how a system built to find the truth settles for a story instead. Ben Whishaw is remarkable; the prison strand pushes its luck. ## Synopsis Ben Coulter (Ben Whishaw) is a young man who cannot properly account for one night, and the people whose job it is to account for it have already made up their minds. Harry Box (Bill Paterson), the detective who takes the case, sits across the interview table from a boy who will not speak. His mother, Mary Coulter (Juliet Aubrey), waits in corridors and is told very little. Alison Slaughter (Lindsay Duncan) is the barrister who comes to argue for him. On the remand wing, Hooch (Pete Postlethwaite) takes an interest in the new arrival and Freddie Graham (David Harewood) runs things, while Judge Ira (Richenda Carey) waits at the end of the road. Five hour-long episodes follow one case through the British system, from the first interview to the trial. ## Review Peter Moffat has written a five-hour drama about a single case, from the night of the killing to the end of the trial, and he has resisted almost every temptation that comes with the form. There is no team of brilliant detectives, no cross-cutting between cases, no villain who twirls anything. There is a boy, a dead woman, and a machine that starts turning the moment the handcuffs go on. It is one of the best British television dramas we know, and the reason is that nobody in it is doing anything wrong by their own lights. Ben Whishaw plays Ben Coulter as someone who does not know what happened either. He was in the house, he was drunk and drugged, he woke with a knife in front of him, and when Harry Box asks him a plain question his face does the work of a man searching an empty room. Whishaw hardly raises his voice across five episodes. He flinches, swallows, looks at the floor, and the series watches the police and the lawyers read those flinches as evidence. By the second hour we had stopped asking whether he did it and started asking what it would take for anyone to believe him if he had not. Bill Paterson is the quiet triumph. Box is tired, patient, courteous to the boy’s mother, and his job is to build a case. Paterson never plays him as a bully. He plays him as a man who has seen a hundred boys say nothing and knows what that usually means, and the horror of the series is that he is nearly always right. Lindsay Duncan’s Alison Slaughter is brisk, expensive and faintly bored, and Duncan lets us see that the boredom is a professional tool. Juliet Aubrey, as Mary Coulter, spends most of her screen time in corridors and waiting rooms, and she makes a mother’s uselessness in the face of procedure into something we could hardly bear to watch. The photography is shared between Tat Radcliffe, Nic Knowland and Eric Maddison, and it holds to one idea: the light gets worse the further Ben travels into the system. The opening night is orange streetlamp and black water; the custody suite is flat fluorescent; the wing, as built by Cristina Casali and Will Hughes-Jones, is painted the colour of old teeth and shot on long lenses so that other men are always too close in the background. Dan Jones and John Lunn’s music is a few held notes under the interviews, and it stops when a door closes. Ian Farr, Chris Wyatt, Sarah Brewerton and St. John O’Rorke cut the interrogations without the usual reaction shots, so we are left looking at Ben’s face for exactly as long as Box is. The moment that got at us is small and comes early. Ben climbs the stairs in the dead woman’s house, the camera stays behind him and does not cut, and we knew what was in the bedroom before he did. We were frightened for him in a way we are rarely frightened for anyone on television, and we stayed frightened for five hours. It does not all work. The prison strand, with Pete Postlethwaite’s Hooch as a self-appointed guardian and David Harewood’s Freddie Graham running the wing, drifts towards melodrama in the middle episodes. Postlethwaite is as good as ever, but the plotting around him asks us to accept a drugs economy and a protection racket that feel imported from a rougher programme. The trial is scrupulous about procedure and a little slow for it; two of the courtroom hours could have been one and a half. These faults cost the series some of our trust. They do not undo it. A second run of five episodes followed on 5 October 2009, with a new case and Maxine Peake and Matthew Macfadyen in the leads. On the evidence of the first, Moffat was right to think the form could carry more than one story. Watch it one episode an evening, over a week. Taken in a single sitting the prison episodes bunch up and the faults show. Spaced out, you get what we got: a week of being unsure whether a boy you have come to like did a terrible thing, and of noticing how quickly everyone around him stopped wondering. *Fi1m score 85, published 7 October 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is Criminal Justice worth watching?** *Criminal Justice* is worth watching for anyone who likes a crime drama that follows one case slowly and seriously, and we scored it 85. Ben Whishaw and Bill Paterson are the reasons to see it; the prison episodes drift towards melodrama and the trial is slow. Watch it one episode an evening rather than in a single sitting. **How long is Criminal Justice, and what is it rated?** *Criminal Justice* has episodes of about 1h 00m. It is a crime and drama series. **Where can I watch Criminal Justice in Sweden?** *Criminal Justice* is not on any streaming or rental service in Sweden at the moment. It is available in 6 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How violent or frightening is Criminal Justice, and is it suitable for children?** *Criminal Justice* carries no certificate, but it is an adult drama built around a killing, a remand wing with a drugs economy and a protection racket, and long police interviews. There is little shown violence; the fear comes from one unbroken shot on a staircase and from watching a boy lose control of his own story. It is not for younger children, but older teenagers interested in how the law works should cope. **How does Criminal Justice compare to Night of the Living Dead?** *Criminal Justice* and [*Night of the Living Dead*](https://film.one/film/night-of-the-living-dead) are both about ordinary people trapped by one bad night, but they share little else. Moffat's series is a five-hour study of police, lawyers and prison, carried by very fine acting; Romero's film is a short, rough horror with uneven performances. The series is the better made of the two, and the one to pick unless what you want is to feel unsafe for ninety minutes. **What should I watch after Criminal Justice?** After *Criminal Justice*, try [*The Night Of*](https://film.one/film/night-of-the-living-dead) (2016, Fi1m 88): The American remake of this exact story, slower, hotter and just as frightened for its boy. Then [*A Prophet*](https://film.one/film/a-prophet) (2009, Fi1m 86): A young man learns the prison from the inside; the French answer to Hooch’s wing; and [*12 Angry Men*](https://film.one/film/12-angry-men) (1957, Fi1m 91): One room, one case, and a jury that has already decided; the system in miniature. ### Reviews we read (1) - **The Guardian**, Lucy Mangan (75/100, inferred): Mangan finds the opening episode subtle, clever and compelling in its depiction of how the legal process can turn uncertainty into apparent guilt. She particularly praises the way ordinary events are reframed through a presumption of guilt. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/culture/tvandradioblog/2008/jul/01/lastnightstvcriminaljustic) ## Details - **Created by:** Peter Moffat - **Creator:** Peter Moffat - **Director:** Marc Jobst, Yann Demange, Luke Watson, Otto Bathurst - **Writer:** Peter Moffat - **Cinematography:** Tat Radcliffe, Nic Knowland, Eric Maddison - **Editor:** Ian Farr, St. John O'Rorke, Sarah Brewerton, Chris Wyatt - **Music:** Dan Jones, John Lunn - **Production design:** Cristina Casali, Will Hughes-Jones - **Costume design:** Annie Symons, Claire Anderson - **Producer:** Pier Wilkie, Steve Lightfoot - **Cast:** Juliet Aubrey as Mary Coulter; Ben Whishaw as Ben Coulter; Lindsay Duncan as Alison Slaughter; Bill Paterson as Harry Box; Maxine Peake as Juliet Miller; David Harewood as Freddie Graham; Denis Lawson as Bill Faber; Charlie Creed-Miles as Simon Ticehurst - **Runtime:** 1h 00m - **Release (Sweden):** 30 June 2008 - **Genres:** Crime, Drama - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbsPj79nAy4 ## Where to watch in Sweden Not streaming, renting or buying in Sweden at the last check. Also available in: AU, CA, GB, IN, NZ, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *The Night Of* (2016), Fi1m 88: The American remake of this exact story, slower, hotter and just as frightened for its boy. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/night-of-the-living-dead.md) - *A Prophet* (2009), Fi1m 86: A young man learns the prison from the inside; the French answer to Hooch’s wing. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/a-prophet.md) - *12 Angry Men* (1957), Fi1m 91: One room, one case, and a jury that has already decided; the system in miniature. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/12-angry-men.md) - *The Hunt* (2012), Fi1m 82: Mads Mikkelsen watches a Danish village decide he is guilty; the same cold logic, no courtroom. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-hunt.md) - *Red Riding* (2009): Three films of Yorkshire policing where the machine protects itself first; bleaker, angrier company. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/criminal-justice