Capaldi, Peter

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    What to Watch This Weekend: A Tricky Cop Show

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    Our TV critic recommends a sleek British thriller that puts new spins on familiar crime show setups.Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo star in “Criminal Record.”Apple TV+There is a sleek chicness to “Criminal Record,” an engrossing British cop thriller on Apple TV+. It pulls from lots of well-worn formats but reconstitutes everything into its own chilly terrazzo, sometimes to exciting effect.Oh, sure, it’s hard to make room in one’s heart or viewing schedule for yet another dirty cop who does things his way — but he get results, damn it! Would you believe he has a troubled daughter whose antics further tie him to the seedy side of things, that he is both a dangerous guy and a loving but suffering father? How about a righteous female cop who takes her cases a little too personally, going so far as to endanger herself as a sublimation of the dissatisfaction in her domestic life? Ever heard of layers? Hmm?But luckily “Criminal Record” is a little trickier than that, fleshing out familiar setups with tense vitality. Peter Capaldi fills Daniel Hegarty, a detective chief inspector, not with the leather-jacket intensity of most police dramas but with a patient, scary wisdom. Cush Jumbo taps into Detective Sergeant June Lenker’s panic more than her professionalism. Aggression, enmity and maybe even predation are often the dominant themes in a cop show, but here it is wariness. Watching the show feels like watching a snake, its gliding undulations mostly moving side to side but actually propelling the story forward.The action begins when Lenker gets a tip in an emergency domestic violence call. A woman says that her boyfriend is going to kill her, and that he’s killed before and gotten away with it; another man is in prison for the crime. Lenker figures out that it is one of Hegarty’s cases, and despite repeated admonishments to let it go, she can’t stop herself from digging into everything — the identity of the woman on the call, the conviction at issue, Hegarty’s slipperiness. Hegerty and Lenker are suspicious of one another’s motivations, and both are aware of the genuine politics and the less-genuine political optics of their conflict: An old white guy with a network of cronies up against a younger biracial woman who wants to expose his misdeeds. “Are you familiar with the term ‘unconscious bias’?” Hegarty asks Lenker at one point, reveling in his little moment of irony.The push-pull of multiple investigations is more interesting than the at-home plotlines for either detective, though there are a few rich moments and shining fights. When Lenker’s husband complains that everything he says is under a microscope, she’s incensed. “Then say better stuff!” she shouts back.There are eight episodes of “Criminal Record,” and six are available now, with new episodes arriving Wednesdays. More

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      What Inspires Peter Capaldi: Vermeer, ‘Demon Copperhead,’ ‘The Wire’

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      Seeing “A Maid Asleep” at the Met, he said, “without wishing to sound pretentious about it, it was the first picture that I developed a relationship with.”Sometimes it pays to stick close to home.The more Peter Capaldi heard as his wife, the producer Elaine Collins, and the writer Paul Rutman hashed out the story line for the new Apple TV+ thriller “Criminal Record,” the more he hinted that he was their man.They cast him as Daniel Hegarty, a veteran detective on the police force, who has a murky past. As Rutman wrote the script, Capaldi’s voice and face were front and center.“That’s the first time that has really happened to me,” said Capaldi, whose adversary, June Lenker — a younger detective contending with misogyny and racism within the force — is played by Cush Jumbo. “I know that that’s who they’re visualizing, so I was able to respond to the material from quite an early date.”Capaldi also had to veil his emotions, a rather tall order for an actor who starred as the 12th Doctor in “Doctor Who.”“I had to hide what was really going on, but at the same time, you still have to have something going on,” he said in a video interview from London, before chatting about the Scottish artist John Byrne and walking in the footsteps of the Romans. “You can’t just sit there.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Vermeer’s ‘A Maid Asleep’Without wishing to sound pretentious about it, it was the first picture that I developed a relationship with. I was in New York doing a show and perhaps going through some melancholic times and carousing too much and enjoying Broadway, but not really that happy myself. So I would often go to the Met and sit and look at that picture if I was feeling anxious. There was a spirit of wisdom and calmness that reached out.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Ncuti Gatwa Is the Newest ”Doctor Who.” Here’s How He Stacks Up.

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      As Ncuti Gatwa makes his proper debut, we take a look back at the recent history of those to inhabit the TARDIS.With most TV shows, a major casting change is a dreaded event. But for fans of the long-running British series “Doctor Who,” big casting changes are expected, even anticipated. With the show’s latest Christmas episode, which premiered Monday on Disney+, we got acquainted with the newest Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa (“Sex Education”) — the 15th Doctor and the first Black, openly queer one in series history.The arrival of a new Doctor, the show’s titular time-traveling, space-wandering alien, is always a buzzy occasion. But although the Doctor typically dies and is regenerated in the final minutes of some climactic episode, it is the one immediately following that truly establishes the new incarnation and what kind of flavor he or she will offer. These first full episodes with a new Doctor, including this year’s Christmas special, “The Church on Ruby Road,” can reveal a lot about how that Doctor’s tenure will go.Here’s a look back at the first post-regeneration episodes of every Doctor since the show’s 2005 revival.David Tennant and Billie Piper from 2005 in “Doctor Who.”BBC10th DoctorActor: David TennantFirst Full Episode: “The Christmas Invasion”Writer: Russell T. DaviesFirst Words: “Hello. OK. New teeth, that’s weird. So, where was I? Oh, that’s right! Barcelona.”After a successful revival in 2005 — with one tight season of Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor and Billie Piper as the Doctor’s plucky shopgirl companion, Rose Tyler — the series hit its stride with the next three seasons, starting with what is perhaps the best reincarnation episode since the series’s return, “The Christmas Invasion.” The episode was an auspicious start to the show’s new Golden Age, led by the showrunner and writer Russell T. Davies, with David Tennant as the Doctor.The 10th Doctor delivers a rambling monologue full of queries about what kind of man he is, like Shakespeare refracted through some prism of intergalactic and temporal mysteries; but Tennant’s performance never allows any doubt that he knows who his Doctor is. In a scene near the end of the episode, Tennant’s Doctor firmly declares, “No second chances; I’m that kind of man,” while sending an enemy to his doom. The scene offered a preview of how perfectly Tennant’s Doctor would embody the duality of this hero through his three-plus seasons in the TARDIS — a masterly balance of stillness and chatter, heft and levity.Karen Gillan with Matt Smith, who became the youngest Doctor in the show’s history.BBC11th DoctorActor: Matt SmithFirst Full Episode: “The Eleventh Hour”Writer: Steven MoffatFirst Words: “Legs! I’ve still got legs!”It’s fitting that Matt Smith’s playful young Doctor (the youngest, in fact; Smith was just 26 when cast for the role) begins his tenure in a state of chaos, hanging out of a spinning TARDIS. Known for his fast talking, ebullient charm, the 11th Doctor is manic and wide-eyed in the manner of a precocious kid on a sugar high.Crashing into the yard of a young Amelia Pond (Karen Gillan), who is independent and fearless but for the menacing crack in her bedroom wall, the Doctor arrives ready to step into the role of savior, though he is frazzled dealing with a resetting TARDIS and the aftereffects of his regeneration. Popping back into his TARDIS and promising Amelia he’ll be back in five minutes, the Doctor returns to find that little Amelia has grown up into Amy, who spent years waiting for a man everyone doubted was real.Amy’s life is shaped around the absence of a magical man whom she clings to with a strangely unflappable faith. Her emotional arc with the Doctor is her learning to become independent from the Doctor. But the 11th’s moments of tenderness — as when he grabs the young Amelia’s hand, anticipating the danger — presage the familial relationship that the Doctor will develop with the older Amy and her boyfriend and future centurion husband, Rory (Arthur Darvill).Peter Capaldi, center, as the 12th Doctor.BBC12th DoctorActor: Peter CapaldiFirst Full Episode: “Deep Breath”Writer: Steven MoffatFirst words: “Kidneys! I’ve got new kidneys! I don’t like the color.”In Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor and Jenna Coleman’s Clara Oswald, Moffat created another cute, flirtatious pairing for the TARDIS. The rapid-fire repartee and seamless synergy between the two got a harsh shake-up in the form of the Doctor’s regeneration into the 12th, played by Peter Capaldi.This post-regeneration episode — which starts in Victorian London, where a dinosaur spontaneously combusts in the Thames, and ends as an organ-stealing cyborg tries to escape in a hot-air balloon made of human skin — was a brooding start for the 12th, whose tenure signaled a sharp tonal shift from the 11th’s. Capaldi’s Doctor is rude and pretentious, quick to condescend those around him and snap a quick “shut up.” He is more reminiscent of the Ninth in temperament: He shows more disgust and self-hate, and he is more haunted by his past actions. The 12th appears harsh on the surface but is no less dedicated than previous doctors to keeping everyone safe and alive at the end of the day.Capaldi was 55 when cast in the role, nearly 30 years older than his predecessor, and the show appeared to spend the whole first episode trying to appease fans who might have opposed the big change. In fact, the episode baldly uses the out-of-place dinosaur as a symbol of this much older, out-of-place Doctor. It’s not the most elegant or subtle move, but Capaldi still manages to wring honest emotion from the symbol — something he would continue to do throughout his tenure as Doctor, especially in his later episodes. The 12th never showed the same humanity as the 10th and 11th did, but he had a streak of wisdom that neither could match.Jodie Whittaker, center, presided over a disastrous run as the 13th Doctor.BBC13th DoctorActor: Jodie WhittakerFirst Full Episode: “The Woman Who Fell to Earth”Writer: Chris ChibnallFirst Words: “Oh, brilliant!”“Doctor Who” writers are all guilty, at one time or another, of throwing too much at the wall. But usually a fair percentage sticks. That was not at all true of Chris Chibnall’s writing during Whittaker’s disastrous run as the Doctor.Usually the Doctor’s first episodes are more pared down; there’s no need to get over the top with a Predator-type alien who cheats at his human-hunting exam by using biotech to tag his human — and in the process installs DNA bombs in the collarbones of the Doctor and her new friends.And speaking of friends, the episode is chock-full of them, overcrowding Whittaker’s performance, which remains at a steady level of earnestness and enthusiasm but fails to give nuance or variety. The first episode in a season-long attempt to replicate the more syrupy, wholesome quality of the old “Who” episodes, “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” can’t pull off any sense of menace or stakes, even when some characters begin dying.David Tennant returned as the 14th Doctor.BBC14th DoctorActor: David TennantFirst Full Episode: “The Star Beast”Writer: Russell T. DaviesFirst Words: “I know these teeth. … What? What? What?!”In many ways, the return of Davies and Tennant after the exploding TARDIS disaster that was Seasons 11 through 13 felt like an emergency rescue maneuver. With a few keystrokes, Davies could have undermined or overwritten the 30-plus episodes of the previous Doctor’s arc, but the episode graciously makes a few nods — both comedic and sentimental — to the show’s attempt at telling more progressive and diverse stories during Chibnall’s run, joking at one point that the Doctor’s reversion to cis-male form was clearly a downgrade.“The Star Beast” which begins the abbreviated three-episode return of Tennant’s 10th Doctor, now considered the 14th, is a refreshing return for the show. But even Davies’s captivating dialogue and engaging plots can’t make up for the tissue-thin logic behind this repeat Doctor regeneration.That said, the performances, the reunion of these old faves, the digestible story and the addition of an absurd new alien to the Whoniverse in the form of the Meep (a Furby-type creature that speaks like Yoda), all make “The Star Beast” a solid entry in the “Doctor Who” catalog.Ncuti Gatwa made his full “Doctor Who” debut with the latest Christmas episode. BBC Studios/Bad Wolf15th DoctorActor: Ncuti GatwaFirst Full Episode: “The Church on Ruby Road”Writer: Russell T. DaviesFirst Words: “No way.” “You’re me!” “No, I’m me. I think I’m really, really me!”Another Christmas premiere, “The Church on Ruby Road” is the first full outing for Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor. The plot — involving mischievous, baby-thieving goblins — gets too cutesy at times (a goblin musical number takes things too far), but it tidily connects the Doctor’s complex origin story with that of Ruby, a lively young woman and adoptee who is searching for information on her birth family.Gatwa’s Doctor truly feels like a Doctor Who for the 21st century and a fitting follow-up to Tennant’s Doctor. The 15th is stylish and liberated, with a vibe that is sensual and unbuttoned; he’s a Doctor who seems much more at home than the others in his body. He is chipper but not frivolous, and he is capable of depth that isn’t limited to darkness. At one point in the episode, the 15th Doctor cries — full, drip-down-the-face tears — over the abduction of someone he just met and how that abduction has hardened those implicated in the loss. Gatwa’s Doctor shows a great deal of humanity, which isn’t always a given for the character, who often understands humans intellectually but closes himself off to a more comprehensive human experience. More

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      In ‘Bach & Sons,’ a Composer Stares Down Death

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      The new play at the Bridge Theater in London and two other productions on the city’s stages examine characters facing the end.LONDON — Few actors could stare down mortality better than Simon Russell Beale in “Bach & Sons,” a problematic new play at the Bridge Theater that benefits from a piercing central performance. Telling of the often testy relationship between the composer Johann Sebastian Bach and two of his 20 children, both sons who were musicians as well, the writer Nina Raine has come up with a research-heavy play that could be described as “Amadeus” lite. Like that play, Peter Shaffer’s celebrated take on Mozart, “Bach & Sons” features extended discussions of the nature of mediocrity, and also leans toward the scatological. Amid an expletive-heavy script, one character makes a passing reference to “a turd in the tureen.”Nicholas Hytner’s production boasts an evocative design from Vicki Mortimer, with cascading keyboards hanging above the stage; as in “Amadeus,” the dialogue often cuts off to make way for excerpts from the composer’s output. Beale with Racheal Ofori as Anna Magdalena Wilcke in another scene from “Bach & Sons.” Manuel HarlanOver time, Bach Sr. loses his sight and cedes ground to his son Carl (a vivid Samuel Blenkin), whom the father derides as musically “efficient” — a decided slight from a visionary who likes his art messier and more inspiring. Yet all Carl wants is simply to be loved. (Another son, Wilhelm, is played by Douggie McMeekin as an artistic prodigy doomed to failure.)The family chat consists largely of extolling the power of music, when you can’t help but feel that, really, they would have gotten on with making it. A climactic discourse on dissonance reminded me of Georges Seurat’s quest for harmony in the musical “Sunday in the Park With George,” to cite a more moving depiction of the creative process than “Bach & Sons,” with its boilerplate pronouncements about the value of art. Even so, Beale commands attention as the aging and worn Bach fades away. The composer’s canon, we’re told, can be characterized as a meditation on “the variety of grief,” and Beale communicates a man who has lived that grief himself: The actor cuts against the sentimentality of the writing to catch directly at the heart. “You can’t go on living and living and living,” says a character at the start of Nick Payne’s “Constellations” — and so it’s not altogether surprising when this 70-minute play turns toward confronting death in its second half.Payne’s one-act two-hander was first seen at the Royal Court in 2012 before transferring to the West End and then Broadway. The elegant staging from the director Michael Longhurst is now being revived at the Vaudeville Theater through Sept. 12, with the designer Tom Scutt’s buoyant cloudscape of balloons intact.Peter Capaldi and Zoe Wanamaker in Nick Payne‘s “Constellations,” directed by Michael Longhurst at the Vaudeville Theater.Marc BrennerThis time, there are four casts rotating across the run, and London theatergoers have so far had the opportunity to see two of them. (Among those still to come is a gay coupling that will feature the TV and stage name Russell Tovey.) The changing players reveal wildly contrasting takes on a tricky if accessible text in which events, large and small, are replayed with different outcomes, in accordance with Payne’s interest in the existence of a “multiverse.” That notion of alternate worlds coexisting alongside ours fuels a play that explores the infinite variability of life’s every moment, except the final one, which is always death.Peter Capaldi and Zoe Wanamaker, the oldest duo of the four, are also the more actorly of the two seen so far: You feel Wanamaker, especially, standing outside her character, Marianne, a Cambridge brainiac who holds forth on quantum mechanics and string theory. The parts don’t feel like a natural fit for either performer, though Capaldi, a onetime Doctor Who on TV, compensates with an abundance of charm. A much younger company brings together Sheila Atim (who won an Olivier for her role in “Girl From the North Country”) and Ivanno Jeremiah, who have a visceral connection onstage. Jeremiah is immediately likable as Roland, a beekeeper who meets Marianne at a barbecue and engages with her in a strange conversation about licking your elbow — to be honest, such exchanges work much better with the younger cast. Sheila Atim and Ivanno Jeremiah in “Constellations.”Marc BrennerAnd when Marianne confronts her possibly foreshortened life, the astonishing Atim communicates the gravitas of the situation even as Payne’s play makes clear that her fate can be rewritten with a happier ending in a parallel universe. These two are so good that, on a fourth viewing of the play, I felt as if I were seeing “Constellations” afresh: Atim and Jeremiah replay familiar material so it seems new — a virtue in a play that makes so much of repetition.If “Constellations” is late in raising the specter that its leading woman will die too soon, we know from the start that this is what will happen to the heroine of “Last Easter,” the 2004 play by Bryony Lavery at the intimate Orange Tree Theater through Aug. 7. (The show will be livestreamed on the theater’s website on July 22 and 23.) The director Tinuke Craig’s nimble production finds surprising levels of comedy in this story of June (the excellent Naana Agyei-Ampadu), a lighting designer with terminal cancer who goes on a pilgrimage with three friends to Lourdes, France, because — well, why not? Maybe a miracle will happen.June, it seems, is especially fond of the painter Caravaggio, and the first act veers away from anything maudlin toward lessons in art history one minute, a jaunty snatch or two from the song “Easter Parade” the next. The tone is unexpectedly breezy, and the camaraderie between June and her pals, also theater practitioners, is nicely done. These friendships keep June’s spirits buoyant, even as her body starts to let her down.From left, Naana Agyei-Ampadu, Jodie Jacobs and Peter Caulfield in Bryony Lavery’s “Last Easter,” directed by Tinuke Craig at the Orange Tree Theater.Helen MurrayYet after the intermission, as June’s condition worsens, the writing turns more self-conscious. June’s devoted buddy Gash (Peter Caulfield) twice calls out “cliché alert,” and several events are described as “undramatic,” an unusual choice of adjective for a dramatist. (The quartet also includes the character of a heavy-drinking actress who soon wears out her welcome, both as written and performed.)The imminence of death seems to defy this gifted writer, who goes for the sort of deathbed scene that has been seen onstage and in movies many times over. Whatever the reason for “Last Easter’s” prosaic closing scenes, they share with “Constellations” a sense that mortality comes best in good company.Bach & Sons. Directed by Nicholas Hytner. Bridge Theater, through Sept. 11.Constellations. Directed by Michael Longhurst. Vaudeville Theater, through Sept. 12.Last Easter. Directed by Tinuke Craig. Orange Tree Theater, through Aug. 7. More