# The Capture (2019)

> A wrongly convicted soldier freed on flawed video evidence is pulled back into a fight for his liberty when new CCTV footage surfaces.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/78825

## Facts

- Seasons: 3
- Episodes: 18
- Episode runtime: 59 min
- Status: Returning Series
- Genres: thriller, crime, drama
- Created by: Ben Chanan
- Network: BBC One
- Cast: Holliday Grainger, Callum Turner, Ben Miles, Lia Williams, Ron Perlman, Laura Haddock, Barry Ward, Ginny Holder
- TMDB rating: 8.0/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8201186/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: brisk
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: dense
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: paranoid, tense, cerebral, bleak

## What critics say

Audiences praise the tense, paranoid first season for its plausible surveillance ethics, while later seasons are felt to have declined in quality.

## Synopsis

The Capture (2019-present) is a British political thriller series created by Ben Chanan for BBC One, a prestige crime drama with a hard-edged technological edge. Callum Turner plays Shaun Emery, a soldier whose murder conviction in Afghanistan is overturned on the strength of flawed video evidence, and who returns home to his young daughter only to find damning CCTV footage from a London night out threatening his freedom again. Holliday Grainger plays DI Rachel Carey, a police investigator drawn into the case, while Ben Miles, Lia Williams and Ron Perlman fill out the cast of officials and operatives who move in shadowy circles on the edge of law and government. The engine of the series is the question of who is manipulating the evidence and why, with each episode unpeeling another layer of hacking, deepfake imagery and institutional self-interest. Across three seasons the story stays a single continuing arc rather than a case of the week, with a tense, paranoid and morally slippery register throughout. Set in contemporary Britain, it sits in the lineage of Spooks and the wider tradition of British state conspiracy drama, with its claustrophobic London interiors and cold procedural surfaces. Fans of Spooks, Person of Interest and The Fugitive will find resonance in its plausible paranoia and its refusal to offer clean heroes.

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