Apple TV’s ‘Criminal Record’ hit our screens on January 10th and follows two brilliant detectives in confrontation after an anonymous phone call brings up an old murder case. One is a young woman in the early stages of her career, and the other is a well-connected man determined to protect his legacy. Starring Peter Capaldi as Detective Chief Inspector Daniel Hegarty and Cush Jumbo as Detective Sergeant June Lenker, Criminal Record looks set to be the new crime thriller to watch after Apple’s stream of success in the genre recently with standouts, Slow Horses, Severance and Black Bird.
Criminal Record were a prominent visitor to the borough of Tower Hamlets during filming back in 2022 and early last year. The production had a whopping 48 shoots with us here at the Tower Hamlets Film Office, managed by The Film Office during their filming period, filming at a variety of locations across the borough. Including a very large shoot at Wentworth Street with a 200 strong cast and crew recreating scenes from the 2011 Tottenham riots. This shoot required the utmost preparation with liaison across multiple council boroughs and thorough consultation with resident’s and businesses given the special effects including fire and explosives. Four local residents were employed for paid work experience on this shoot as location marshalls to work alongside the location team helping with the day-to-day running of the shoot from moving equipment, supplying and erecting protection to various departments – ezy-ups, heaters, coolers, keeping the set clean and tidy, redirecting and informing members of the public about what is going on. All valuable tasks that help to keep the film set a well oiled machine!
When a large production such as this rolls into town, we always try to give back to the local community and one great way to do this is through paid work experience on set. We work with local organisations such as Four Corners to provide paid work on location. Four Corners are a charitable organisation based in the borough who work with local people to provide a boost into the industry through training courses, work placements, industry advice and funding. During the course of the production’s filming we provided 15 days worth of work on set for local residents in positions such as location marshalls and runners. For one shoot in particular, which involved an arrest taking place at Shacklewell Street Basketball Court and East Shoreditch Park and a road closure across Brick Lane, Rhoda Street and Shacklewell Street, we placed two local residents From Corners on the shoot for paid location marshalling. We also had a local resident shadow a variety of different departments across the work gaining valuable experience learning what it is like to be on a set.
Another park in the borough was also utilised for a dramatic scene in the aftermath of a shoot out involving all manner of prop emergency services vehicles and armed police officers. Bartlett Park in the shadow of Canary Wharf offered a fantastic controllable space that allowed production to spread out and kept the impact to other park users at a minimum while still offering the production a workable location with great city views. Once again we enlisted the invaluable help of the MET Police Film Unit who were on hand for public reassurance and maximised safety when involving prop weapons in a filming environment.
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The production visited yet more of our locations including one of our most popular private locations in the borough, the LEB , which was transformed into a Police Station for a week. The LEB is often dressed to resemble all manor of locations and makes for a very versatile backdrop for filming of all ilks. Criminal Record also used multiple private locations in the borough for unit and tech basing such as Base East, Mile End Leisure Centre and Shoreditch Underpass which is a great way to maximise local spend in the borough as when productions base in the area they also use local resources such a restaurants, coffee shops, studios for catering, crowd holding and tech parking.
Jacob Hughes-Rodgers, the Lead Film Officer who worked on multiple shoots commented “The borough of Tower Hamlets is widely known for its versitile film friendly locations and its openness to having large scale complex filming, which is one of the main reasons productions such as Criminal Record keep coming back for more! It was fantastic to to work on such complex, intricate and often very sensitive shoots which can often be testing and trying, however the locations team supervised by Matt Lane was a pleasure to work with and we were very pleased to encounter minimal issues with them on so many of their shoots. I personally can’t wait to watch the series and see all our hard work on screen come to life!”
Criminal Record is now available to steam on Apple TV and you can take a look at the trailer below which if you keep your eyes peeled, features some of the locations mentioned above!
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