Critic Reviews

An astoundingly tough, vigorous, sinewy thing without a wasted word or moment. Freeman – who must have fallen on it like a hungry dog – does every bit of it justice. ... The Responder is as fast and riveting as a thriller and as harrowing as a documentary.

This is a phenomenal cast across the board, taking Schumacher's superb scripts and propelling them to even greater heights.

Freeman, though, absolutely bosses this role. ... It’s an accomplished script for a debut writer, with a plot that is never predictable. The supporting cast is uniformly good.

Electrifying. ... A bleak but knockout piece of drama, which shows that Freeman is an actor of extraordinary range.

It’s another matchless piece, in other words. A triumph for all involved.

Series two is also superb, thanks to a combination of Martin Freeman in the best role of his career, and the writing of Tony Schumacher, whose previous life as a Liverpool response officer delivers a crucial sense of authenticity. The supporting cast is also uniformly excellent.

Returned with as much, if not more, swagger and some of the least predictable dialogue you will find in a cop show. Its trump card is never the plot (drugs, guns, hard-faced dealers — meh) but the characters and its darkly comical vignettes.

If the only reason why you watch The Responder is to see Martin Freeman barely hold it together, then it’s a pretty good reason to watch the show. The rest of the plot is incidental to a performance by Freeman that utilizes all of his copious ability to be the aggrieved everyman who’s ready to crack at any moment.

Shot almost entirely after dark and populated with outcasts, losers and broken souls, The Responder could have been 60 minutes of misery. Instead, it was a reminder that Jed Mercurio doesn’t have a monopoly on crime drama that gets under your skin.

It is relentless and grim and that is arguably the point of such brutally honest storytelling.