He was at the bus stop, but he merely kissed her and said goodbye. When Shaun sees the footage of him abusing the victim, he is upset and mystified and claims the scene never happened that way. But after a night at a bar celebrating the victory, he is seen on CCTV at a bus stop kissing and then assaulting his lawyer, who is now missing.
For a night or two of bingeing, you could do a lot worse.Ĭallum Turner - he was Frank Churchill in the recent “Emma” - stars as Afghanistan war veteran Shaun Emery, who at the opening of the series is acquitted of murdering a prisoner of war thanks to a technicality regarding the footage of the shooting.
The plot builds and its story lines intersect nicely, even if it could have been cut back an episode to be a little tighter. It’s a fast-paced story that reminded me, in its propulsive energy, of the 2018 British thriller “Bodyguard” starring Richard Madden. What happens, though, when that footage is altered? By the time I finished the first season, with its nonstop use of manipulated videos, I found myself more suspicious than ever of every single image queued up in my Facebook, Twitter, and news feeds.īy the way, I hope I’m not making “The Capture” sound like a drab lecture in deepfakery or a lesson of any kind. Fittingly, the series is set in London, the famously heavily-surveilled city where CCTV cameras are ubiquitous so that the footage can be used to help solve crimes.
Initially made for the BBC and now available on Peacock, “The Capture” gives us a suspenseful situation involving murder in which the closed-circuit TV evidence cannot be trusted. The nearly nine-minute clip of George Floyd dying is among the past century’s most powerful and undeniable pieces of footage.īut a provocative six-episode British crime series called “The Capture” takes a troubling look at the other side to the coin that is our profoundly visual culture - where seeing highly doctored visuals is believing. Seeing is believing, even for many who’d prefer to fantasize about a happier national reality. Clearly, the cellphone videos of police abusing and killing Black people have put that grim and long-lived reality beyond question for many white Americans.