Hayley Atwell’s Life of Crime is a life worth watching

Hayley Atwell shines in the ITV miniseries Life of Crime, even if it’s an unfinished life. Find out why you have to uncover it in the latest Deeper Cut.

Five years ago, Hayley Atwell was leading a life of crime, and she was brilliant at it—but chances are you completely missed it. Life of Crime deserves to be on everyone’s watch list, even with its flaws.

It’s been well-established that British crime dramas are the best in the genre. They’re simply a cut above the rest with the quality of their writing, the level of their acting, and an atmosphere that’s perfect for a good mystery. Life of Crime, the 2013 miniseries written by Declan Croghan that aired on ITV and is currently on Amazon, falls right into that space.

It rests squarely on two remarkable performances. One is from Atwell, two years after she gained worldwide fame as Peggy Carter. The other is from Richard Coyle, whom Netflix fans will know as Father Blackwood in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. They aren’t actors one would necessarily think of putting together — up to that point, Coyle was best known for playing the slightly oddball Jeff Murdock in Coupling, and most of Atwell’s resume was period dramas — but they made such a genuine team.

And that’s what makes Life of Crime so compelling, because as its cheeky title indicates, it’s about a life. The life of Atwell’s character, Denise Woods, which unknowingly becomes defined by crime.

The first of three episodes introduces Denise as she’s graduating from the academy for London’s Metropolitan Police. As the daughter of a policeman, she’s intent on following after her father. Even if her mother Rose (Ruth McCabe) steadfastly disapproves. And even if this is 1985, so the rookie officer is looked down upon solely for being a woman, and promptly sexually harassed at the graduation party.

Everything changes when Detective Sergeant Ray Deans (Coyle) borrows Denise from working the station’s front desk so that she can help him diffuse a volatile domestic dispute. It doesn’t go well; she’s injured and wakes up in a local hospital, starting herself down the path toward a case that will consume three decades of her life.

Life of Crime is a crime drama, but it’s also a period piece; Croglan makes a point of setting each episode in the same year as a major event in British history. And because of its extended narrative, it’s a fascinating character study, even if its format ultimately does it some harm along with the good.

Spoiler alert: The rest of this column contains spoilers for all three Life of Crime episodes. 

When heading home after her injury, Ray and Denise run across a crime scene, and Denise is shocked to discover that the murder victim is a young girl she’d spoken to in the hospital. She finds ways to remain involved with the case, and while their boss is quick to frame the girl’s father as her killer, Denise is convinced the real perpetrator is nightclub bouncer Mike Holland (Julian Lewis Jones).

Life of Crime puts Denise in a precarious position. Unwilling to let Holland get away, she makes the desperate move of planting evidence inside his van so that he’s convicted. It’s not just that her life becomes consumed by the crime she’s investigating — the title also refers to how she completely changes her life by committing a crime.

The entire series is a double-edged sword, and it’s one that Atwell is brilliant at wielding. Thanks to the split narrative, audiences find out that Denise’s career took off because of her solving that case, and by 1997 she’s been promoted twice to Detective Inspector. She now outranks Ray, and that causes some tension in their relationship. At some point they also fell in love, got married and had a daughter, Charlotte.

But with the changing of the times comes a change in technology, and the Holland case is opened up again. Denise’s fateful decision destroys her marriage — the breach of trust is the last straw for a frustrated Ray — and gets her demoted. Atwell expertly plays a woman whose world quickly unravels because of a decision she made when she was young, idealistic, and selfish. As it collapses, so does her character.

Life of Crime then jumps forward one more time in the third and final episode, to 2013. Denise has managed to recover from her shame and be promoted twice more; she’s now Detective Chief Inspector, giving orders in the same station where she once couldn’t get the time of day. And she’s on the verge of going even higher to become the new Superintendent, but she risks it all when she’s convinced that a third murder matches the same modus operandi.

The show is outstanding at how it keeps everything connected, usually with a sort of painful irony. By the time Denise makes DCI she’s snapping just like her old boss used to, just without the sexism. And there’s a new rookie female cop in her office, also trying to reach for that brass ring a bit ahead of schedule. After more than two decades on the job, she’s become the institution.

Her life is entirely about solving crimes, while the one she never quite closed, and the one she committed, are always over her shoulder. Ray eventually remarries a woman named Carol, but Denise is never shown to have another husband or love interest. Her relationship with Charlotte is also frayed.

Life of Crime allows Atwell to unpack all of that, and less so Coyle, who plays Ray as a man who winds up being eclipsed by the woman he loved and doesn’t know how to deal with it. He has no idea who he’s supposed to be in her shadow, and slightly resents being there. It’s a joy to watch them keep pushing these characters further down the line.

But the same device that enables them to do that also leaves some gaps that would have been even better filled in. Skipping over a decade-plus at a time, the series takes key events as read. Audiences never see Denise and Ray’s relationship develop. That keeps us from having another love scene wedged into the plot, but you wonder how they got from being new colleagues to husband and wife.

When did things start to go wrong? It’s not just Denise’s actions that prompt their divorce; that’s the last piece of a long-simmering destruction. How did she overcome her demotion to not only get back her old rank, but get promoted again? Where did Ray end up working? He’s not seen at the station in either of the last two episodes, so he went somewhere. There are so many parts of Denise Woods’ story that Life of Crime merely implies because it shifts so much time.

But the fact that we are left asking those questions tells you how memorable it is. Hayley Atwell and Richard Coyle pull us into the lives of these characters, and they evolve them episode after episode in ways it takes other actors entire series to do, holding together a poignant story about how life can be shaped by one crime, or one choice. Life of Crime is a must-watch, even if the life story it tells still has a few more chapters in there somewhere.

Life of Crime is available for streaming on Amazon Video and Britbox. Find the latest Deeper Cut every Wednesday in the Entertainment category at FanSided.