Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. So goes the expression, one with which DS June Lenker (Cush Jumbo) is apparently unaware. Why else would she again fall in with the disgraced Daniel Hegarty (Peter Capaldi) in Criminal Record Season 2? You think one go-round with the duplicitous, crooked Hegarty would be enough.

To be somewhat fair to Lenker, she’s not 100 percent herself. The tragic murder of a teenager has set her on edge. She was on the scene during the protest/counter-protest turned violent but was unable to save him. To make matters worse, she swears she saw caught a glimpse of someone familiar in the melee. But that would be impossible. That man, Billy (Luther Ford), should still be in prison for a murder he committed as a teenager. It’s following up on that glimpse that pulls her back into Hegarty’s orbit. And like so many, she decides to throw in with the devil she knows.

The devil she doesn’t is an internet conspiracy/”England for the English” white supremacist type (Dustin Demri-Burns). Demri-Burns plays him with a kind of shit-eating, mischievousness that feels real-world adjacent. He’s too charismatic for your Shapiros, Carlsons, or Becks, but he gets you in the neighborhood. While Season 1 was plenty compelling, it lacked a villain (if you slot Capaldi in as an anti-hero as the show clearly does) anywhere near as interesting as what Demri-Burns does here.

As an American, it does feel a bit removed from time to watch this online hate machine rant and rave about government targeting and speech oppression. Stateside, those figures, at least temporarily, have won. Now they hold press conferences to command the populace to respect masked assailants wearing badges and not to say a bad word about themselves or any of their friends. As he makes like Alex Jones and insists the deaths of minorities are false flags, it forces one to once again reflect on how we gave the mantle of power over to these malevolent carnival barkers.

Unfortunately, as strong as Demri-Burns work is, he also stumbles backward into earning the show’s biggest criticism. The more Criminal Record Season 2 shifts its focus onto Demri-Burns and his acolytes, the farther it drifts from its inciting incident. As a result, what starts as a season about the killing of a teen boy of color becomes increasingly about the games aggrieved white men play. By the final episode, the murder victim is barely a footnote. The show accidentally mirrors Hegarty’s actions, willing to overlook an injustice in the pursuit of its larger mission. It may be a plot necessity, but it is still disappointing that it doesn’t make even a small amount of space in the final episode to reconnect with the victim’s family.

While the thing is in motion, however, viewers will likely be swept up in the show’s momentum. Jumbo does well to illustrate how Lenker’s world has shrunk since last season—and continues to shrink in Criminal Record Season 2—with a strong, unshowy performance. The toll of the work flits across her face and her body language. Even as she tries to hold the line with Hegarty, you can feel her losing ground in her battle to be more than just a cop.

Capaldi, on the other hand, seems unchanged by last season. He’s as amoral—or at least only moral in his distinct way—as ever in his new role in Intelligence. His willingness to bend rules, to play it fast and loose, has apparently not been dinged by his and Lenker’s first go-round. Similarly, his strange devotion to broken people like Billy—and in some ways, Lenker herself—remains intact. He is stubbornly clinging to both everything good and bad within him. It’s as if changing one would have to alter the other. He either refuses to do that or simply dares not risk it.

Ultimately, it is the performances—Jumbo, Capaldi, and Demri-Burns—that render Criminal Record Season 2 a work as compelling as the inaugural season. While the show never quite sells on the logic of Lenker allowing herself to be brought under Hegarty’s wing again, it conveys the emotionality of it. The promise of exorcising guilt. The adrenaline rush. The lure of power mixed with the ability to rationalize one’s behavior as for the greater good. It makes no sense she’d work with him again. And yet creator Paul Rutman and his team perfectly convey how the devil gets you to willingly hand over your soul, bit by bit.

Criminal Record Season 2 breaks out of solitary onto AppleTV starting April 22.

Criminal Record Season 2 Trailer: