Criminal on Netflix: From Hayley Atwell to David Tennant - meet the cast and characters

The cast of Netflix’s new TV series Criminal look familiar?

From Line of Duty and Bodyguard to Happy Valley, Broadchurch and Marcella, many of the British cast have appeared in crime dramas that you might have already watched.

Actors including Hayley Atwell, David Tennant, Lee Ingleby, Nicholas Pinnock, Katherine Kelly and Rochenda Sandall are all in the cast - many of them no strangers to a gritty police procedural.

Criminal is in fact a police procedural with a unique premise: it takes place exclusively within the confines of a police interview suite - like an extended version of those famous interrogation scenes in Line of Duty.

This stripped down, cat-and-mouse drama - streaming on Netflix now - focuses on the intense mental conflict between the police officer and the suspect in question.

Here’s where you might have seen the cast of Criminal: UK before, and who’s in the cast of Criminal France, Germany and Spain.

Criminal: UK cast

Hayley Atwell as Stacey Doyle

Hayley Atwell is one of the few stars of Criminal: UK not to be known for their work in the crime drama / police procedural genre. She's better known for her roles on the big screen, including playing Peggy Carter in various Marvel films, and the spin-off TV series, Agent Carter. 

Atwell plays police suspect Stacey Doyle in Criminal.

David Tennant as Dr. Edgar Fallon

The Scottish actor is no stranger to the TV world, and one of Tennant’s most famous roles is in crime drama Broadchurch. He played police detective DI Alec Hardy alongside Olivia Colman. Sci-fi fans will of course recognise him from playing The Doctor in Doctor Who from 2005–2010, or more recently, alongside Michael Sheen in Amazon's Good Omens.

Tennant plays police suspect Dr. Fallon.

Lee Ingleby as Tony Myerscough

Crime drama fans will immediately recognise police detective Myerscough from another major show of the same ilk - Line of Duty. Lee Ingleby played Nick Huntley in season 4 of Jed Mercurio’s police procedural - the husband of Thandie Newton’s character, Roz Huntley.

You might also recognise him from TV series including The A Word and Innocent.

Nicholas Pinnock as Paul Ottager

Police detective Ottager look familiar in Criminal? You might recognise actor Nicholas Pinnock from another major crime drama TV series - Marcella. In the ITV series, he plays Marcella (Anna Friel)’s husband, Jason Backland. 

You might also recognise Pinnock from TV series including Fortitude and Counterpart.

Speaking about his character in the show, Pinnock tells BT TV exclusively: "So Ottager is basically the enforcer... he goes in to squeeze the confession out of people when they’re being difficult - it either works or it doesn’t.

"From what I understand my character had been in the department before, then gone away to another department somewhere else, maybe up north, had got a promotion and had come back as a detective, not as a constable.

"He’d worked with all of those people before, and had a relationship with Katherine Kelly’s character [Natalie Hobbs], and so there is a kind of love triangle going on between mine, Katherine and Lee’s characters. There’s a little bit of rivalry [between Ottager and Myerscough] but also a mutual respect."

Katherine Kelly as Natalie Hobbs

Katherine Kelly is another actor familiar with the crime drama genre, having appeared as DI Jodie Shackleton in Happy Valley. She also hosts a true crime TV series, Murdertown, on Crime+Investigation.

Since leaving Coronation Street in 2012, Kelly has appeared in shows including Mr Selfridge, Cheat, The Night Manager and Gentleman Jack. She stars as Hobbs in Criminal on Netflix.

Rochenda Sandall as Vanessa Warren

Like Lee Ingleby, Rochenda Sandall has also appeared in BBC police drama Line of Duty - although she joined the cast as Lisa McQueen in season five, so has yet to share any scenes with Ingleby in that show.

In Criminal, she plays police officer Warren, sharing many scenes with Katherine Kelly (Hobbs).

Criminal: UK also stars Mark Stanley (Sanditon) as Hugo Duffy, Shubham Saraf (Bodyguard) as Kyle Petit, Youssef Kerkour (Home) as Jay Mouhtassine and Clare-Hope Ashitey (Doctor Foster) as Adele Addo.

Criminal: France cast

Guest stars: Nathalie Baye, Jérémie Renier, Sara Giraudeau.

Regular cast: Margot Bancilhon, Laurent Lucas, Stéphane Jobert, Anne Azoulay, Mhamed Arezki.

Criminal: Germany cast

Guest stars: Peter Kurth, Christian Berkel, Deniz Arora and Nina Hoss.

Regular cast: Eva Meckbach, Sylvester Groth, Florence Kasumba, Christian Kuchenbuch and Jonathan Berlin.

Criminal: Spain cast

Guest stars: Carmen Machi, Inma Cuesta, Eduard Fernández, Emma Suárez, Álvaro Cervantes.

Regular cast: Jorge Bosch, José Ángel Egido, Nuria Mencía, Daniel Chamorro, María Morales, Javi Coll and Milo Taboada. 

Criminal is streaming on Netflix now.