Giri/Haji · Season 1 · Netflix
Giri/Haji Season 1
Giri/Haji Season 1 is a MUST-WATCH, BollyMeter 8.8/10. 8 episodes on Netflix from 17 October 2019.
Updated
What BollyAI Thinks
Giri/Haji premiered on BBC Two in October 2019 to immediate critical acclaim, earning the first perfect Rotten Tomatoes score for a British crime drama in years - 100 percent from 24 critics. Creator Joe Barton and director Julian Farino constructed something genuinely original: a crime thriller that swaps between Tokyo and London genre registers with formal confidence, using split-screen sequences, animated interludes, and bilingual storytelling to illuminate the cultural gap between its two settings. Takehiro Hira and Kelly Macdonald gave career performances. Radio Times awarded five stars; The Daily Telegraph described it as 'impressionistic, playful and unashamedly arty.' The Metacritic score of 76 from just 4 critics understates the critical enthusiasm. Its cancellation after one season remains one of the decade's more bewildering television decisions.
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The Room
“Smart, suspenseful, and superbly shot, Giri/Haji is a near-perfect crime thriller with a surprisingly sharp sense of humor.”
Rotten Tomatoes Critic Consensus
Standout Episodes
The hours worth arguing about - premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.
- E1Episode 19.0
The premiere juxtaposes Tokyo police procedure and London underworld with formal flair that signals immediately this is not a standard crime import. Kenzo Mori's arrival in London is staged as a slow collision of cultural expectations - his rigid duty ethic versus the chaos he finds. The Daily Telegraph called the opening episode 'impressionistic, playful and unashamedly arty.'
The moment: The switch between Tokyo's ordered institutional world and London's messy, multicultural crime scene - the formal gap that defines the show's entire sensibility.
Full review of E1 → - E8Episode 89.0
The finale resolves the central mystery in a way that honours the show's complexity - loyalties tested, duty and shame weighed against each other, and a conclusion that leaves the cultural question open rather than tidying it into a Western narrative resolution.
The moment: The final confrontation between the two brothers - a moment the show earns through eight episodes of careful setup.
Full review of E8 →