A “gripping” thriller series that is critically acclaimed will soon leave Netflix. The Capture is a British mystery thriller series created, written and directed by Ben Chanan. 

The main cast includes Holliday Grainger, Ginny Holder, Ben Miles, Lia Williams, and Ron Perlman. The series focuses on DI Rachel Carey (Holliday Grainger) as she uncovers high-level conspiracies involving deepfake technology, manipulated CCTV footage, and intelligence service “corrections”. Series 1 follows soldier Shaun Emery (Callum Turner) fighting false, doctored evidence, while Series 2 explores political deception and AI in a post-truth world. The first series was reviewed positively by critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has an approval rating of 92% and an average rating of 8.1/10, based on 39 reviews.

The site’s critical consensus said, “Gripping to the very end, The Capture’s well-built tension culminates in a riveting revitalisation of a tired genre”.

On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, it received a score of 72 out of 100 based on 20 critic reviews, indicating “generally favourable reviews”.

The Telegraph awarded the episode four stars, labelling the series “riveting”, and The Independent also awarded it four stars, describing it as an “intriguing, but rather flawed, sort of Big Brother thriller set in our contemporary world of digital snooping”.

In his review in The Times, James Jackson described the drama as a “neatly structured thriller… clearly out to interrogate surveillance culture”, and awarded it four stars.

The Guardian was less enthusiastic, concluding that it was a “twisty if lacklustre drama”, giving the opening episode only three stars out of five.

Reviews improved over the course of the series, and the finale was highly praised by critics, with many drawing positive comparisons with the BBC‘s similar series Bodyguard, which was broadcast around the same time the previous year.

The Telegraph described it as a “highly satisfying series finale”, whilst The Times critic James Jackson referred to the series as “the thinking man’s” Bodyguard.

The Capture will be leaving Netflix on January 31, according to NewOnNetflix. The third series will air on the BBC this spring.