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THANKFULLY, I’ve never seen the inside of a police interrogation room – not in the , , or – but I can tell you that government buildings can’t be as similar in those nations, or as well-lit, as they appear in Netflix’s new drama series.

Criminal, created by George Kay and Jim Field Smith, is a crime procedural that strips away all the flashy stuff. You won’t see a car chase or enter a murder scene. There’s no DNA lab, no courtroom drama. Just a room, a suspect and a handful of police, either asking questions or observing behind a two-way mirror. (Admittedly, there’s a coffee machine in the hallway – that changes up the scenery a bit.)

Four countries, with three stories in each. Twelve tales, then, enacted on the same limited set. A back-to-back viewing of all the episodes isn’t something I would recommend.

Each story is performed in the country’s native language with subtitles. This is television worth actually watching, not focusing half your attention on while scrolling through your phone. Although each country’s episodes have a different director, any disjointedness is overcome by the shared set design and visual tone. Despite being set in four European countries, all the episodes were filmed at Netflix’s production hub at Ciudad de la Tele in Madrid.

“It’s a crime procedural that strips away all the flashy stuff. You won’t see a car chase or enter a murder scene”

I was surprised to see how each director had framed the action, finding countless new angles on the same space. If future episodes continue in this vein, this interest, I imagine, will be hard to maintain.

But it is here that psychology itself becomes another character in the television show as we see manipulation play out in real time, both from the investigators and their suspects. Some of the most intriguing views into the art of interrogation come in snippets of conversation between the various police crews, who swap in and out of the room to better intimidate, empathise with or stonewall their suspects.

The weakest set of stories is the one from Spain, which made caricatures of some of the characters and had twist endings I could see coming a mile away. These episodes included investigators who routinely lied to the suspects, as well as forging a warrant and threatening to harm their loved ones. Yet it wasn’t presented in a way that felt like a commentary on police corruption, but more as a way to create drama within the show’s tight format.

It wasn’t necessary. The UK series includes two performances that are so compelling I couldn’t look away. In its first episode, David Tennant plays the stepfather of a 14-year-old girl, and is being questioned about her rape and murder. For the first 15 minutes he says nothing but “No comment”, each a masterclass in restraint.

The moments that stayed with me longest were from Hayley Atwell, who plays a woman being questioned about the death of her sister’s boyfriend. She was by turns brash, pained, defensive and utterly wrecked. Her every lip quiver was perfectly judged.

We get only glimpses of the lives of the investigators, whether they are arguing in the hall or watching from behind a two-way mirror as their colleagues psychologically break down a suspect. But I quite liked not really being able to tell where things might go in the future between these co-workers as they angled for advantage, stabbed each other in the back and fell in love.