Television series
Criminal Justice
A tense, unglamorous procedural that follows the accused rather than the detectives — first a hungover student who can't remember the night a woman died, then a battered wife who nearly killed her husband. Peter Moffat strips away courtroom melodrama for the grinding reality of remand, legal aid solicitors and a system that grinds people down long before a verdict arrives. Slow, humane, quietly devastating.
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Time2021
Jimmy McGovern's prison drama shares Criminal Justice's unflinching interest in what the system actually does to a person, hour by hour, told with the same moral seriousness and no easy villains.
But It's bleak and claustrophobic with almost no relief — three episodes of sustained dread, not something to binge for comfort.
Happy Valley2014
Sarah Lancashire anchors a crime drama that treats ordinary people caught in violence with the same weary compassion Moffat brings to his defendants — gripping without ever feeling cheap.
But It escalates into some genuinely harrowing territory across its run; not for anyone wanting a light procedural.
Rectify2013
An American slow-burn about a man released after twenty years on death row, obsessed with the same question Criminal Justice asks — what prison and suspicion do to memory and self.
But It's deliberately unhurried, almost meditative; if you want plot momentum this will frustrate you.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
12 Angry Men1957
Both strip a crime down to the moment before judgment and ask what 'certainty' actually means to the people deciding a stranger's fate.
One room, twelve jurors, and the exact same question Criminal Justice keeps circling — can anyone ever really know what happened, and what does reasonable doubt cost the person left holding it?
But It's a stagey, dialogue-only black-and-white film from another era; nothing here for anyone wanting visual spectacle.
More like this (8)
Broadchurch2013
A community torn apart by a single crime, with the same patient attention to grief and suspicion rippling outward rather than a tidy whodunit rush.
But The mystery-box structure and occasional soapiness sit further from realism than Criminal Justice ever does.
The Fall2013
Gillian Anderson brings the same procedural patience, this time from the investigator's side, in a moody, slow-building Belfast thriller with real psychological texture.
But It flirts with the serial-killer's perspective in ways some find uncomfortably lingering rather than illuminating.
Silk2011no page yet
Maxine Peake again, this time inside chambers rather than in the dock, in a barrister drama that's sharper and more procedural but still interested in the grubby compromises of the job.
But It's more conventional legal drama than character study — glossier and less raw than Criminal Justice.
Unbelievable2019
A devastating true-crime miniseries about a woman failed by the system meant to protect her, told with the same refusal to sensationalise trauma.
But Based on a real case of sexual assault, it's genuinely upsetting and offers little in the way of catharsis.
The Missing2014
A patient, years-spanning mystery about the human wreckage left by an unresolved crime, with the same interest in how suspicion warps ordinary lives.
But Its dual timeline structure and slow reveals demand real patience and close attention.
Bodyguard2018
Faster and glossier, but built on the same idea of an unreliable, damaged man at the centre of a case that keeps shifting under him.
But It trades Criminal Justice's grounded realism for pure thriller mechanics and a twistier, less plausible plot.
The Thin Blue Line1988
Where Criminal Justice fictionalises a man who can't trust his own memory of a killing, this documentary shows the real system doing exactly that damage to a real one.
Errol Morris's landmark documentary reconstructs a real wrongful murder conviction with hypnotic, unreliable re-enactments — the same fog of memory and coercion that swallows Ben Coulter, but it actually happened.
But It's a formally strange, deliberately disorienting documentary, not a conventional true-crime watch with tidy answers.
Orange Is the New Black2013
Both live inside the machinery of incarceration and remand, but where Moffat goes grim and intimate, this goes loud, colourful and darkly comic about the same institutional cruelty.
Same institution, wildly different register — a glossy, funny, sprawling American women's prison dramedy that still finds room for genuine fury at how the system chews people up.
But Its comedy, ensemble sprawl and soapier turns are a world away from the quiet British realism of Criminal Justice.
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- Peter MoffatCreator