In 'Henry VI, Part 2', Shakespeare has Dick the Butcher stir up Jack Cade's
gang by suggesting that: "...first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". The
legal profession seems always to have provoked cynical and rueful comment, but
on television, at least, lawyers have usually been cast in heroic moulds. For
decades they, and the Law in general, have been a rich source of fascination for
viewers.
The British system divides lawyers into solicitors, who directly liaise with
clients, and barristers, who are instructed by the solicitors on how to
represent the clients in courtroom hearings. Magistrates decide cases in the
Lower Courts, which deal with smaller summary offences; the Higher Courts
consider more serious cases and are presided over by judges, who have much
greater discretion and sentencing powers. The traditional protagonist of a
television legal drama can be seen in such popular series as Boyd QC (ITV,
1956-64), starring the ultra-smooth Michael Denison, and the John Thaw vehicle
Kavanagh QC (ITV, 1995-2001). The eponymous advocates are invariably masters at
using the system to their best advantage, and remain cool and calculating under
pressure, without losing sight of the human dimension to their case. This
dichotomy, requiring of lawyers both intellectual passion and emotional
detachment, was particularly emphasised in The Main Chance (ITV, 1969-75) in
which David Main struggled between his sympathy for the underdog and his desire
to become a huge success as a solicitor.
A number of series featuring barristers have presented more radical
approaches to the genre. Made at the height of Thatcher's Britain, Blind Justice
(BBC, 1988) depicted progressive, left-wing barristers and their unsuccessful
attempts to make the state accountable for its activities limiting the freedom
of the individual. Black Silk (BBC, 1985) followed the travails of a black
lawyer trying to reconcile his social aspirations for a more pluralistic and
multicultural society and his political ambitions within his all-white chambers.
Although at heart an old-fashioned project tailor-made for the glamorous
Margaret Lockwood, Justice (ITV, 1971-73) remains one of the only legal series
to have a woman as its main protagonist. More recently, series focusing on young
lawyers, such as This Life (BBC, 1997-98; 2006), North Square (Channel 4, 2000),
The Brief (ITV, 2005-06) and New Street Law (BBC, 2006- ), have all taken a
vaguely oppositional approach to the legal status quo, but the emphasis is more
on the characters' frequently tumultuous love lives than the issues raised by
their cases. One series that tries to have it both ways is G.F. Newman's Judge
John Deed (BBC, 2001- ), in which the libidinous and quixotic hero is
simultaneously deeply entrenched in the Establishment and yet seemingly
permanently at odds with it.
Although the Law is often seen as arcane and obscure, most people can relate
to being a juror, a dynamic emphasised in some shows by having members of the
public decide the result of a (fictional) case. An early example was the mock
trial staged in British Justice (BBC, tx. 29/9/1947) by Jennifer Wayne and Robert Barr, in which
viewers were invited to pass judgement on the legal system itself. While it's
not clear that this was a genuine 'interactive' experiment, a degree of
'audience participation' was a feature of later legal dramas, notably The
Verdict is Yours (ITV, 1958-59; 1962-63) and the hugely popular daytime series
Crown Court (ITV, 1972-84). Conversely, Jury Room (BBC, 1965) recreated genuine
trials, but fictionalised the jury's deliberations. The 13-part serial Jury
(BBC, 1983) looks outwardly like a standard fictional drama, but while the case
was heard in court in linear fashion, the private lives of its jurors were
presented in parallel but not necessarily in the same time frame. Magistrates'
courts are represented far less often on screen, being more intimate and dealing
with smaller scale cases with less obvious dramatic potential; notable
exceptions include the fine, semi-improvised drama Six Days of Justice (ITV,
1972-75) and In Court Today (ITV, 1959), which was entirely unscripted.
Many sitcoms include episodes where their protagonists serve on juries, among
them Hancock's Half Hour (BBC, 1956-60), Citizen Smith (BBC, 1977-80) and One
Foot in the Grave (BBC, 1990-2000), but only a few have taken the Law as their
main subject. Simon Nye's sitcom Is it Legal? (ITV, 1995-96; Channel 4, 1998)
was set in a solicitor's office, but most of the rest deal with barristers and
judges, for example Brothers in Law (BBC, 1962), taken from Henry Cecil's
bestseller. Cecil was a real-life county court judge and contributed to the
spin-off series Mr Justice Duncannon (BBC, 1963) and worked on Misleading Cases
(BBC, 1967), starring Alastair Sim as the long-suffering Mr Justice Swallow and
also featuring an early appearance by lawyer-turned-comedian John Cleese.
Many practising lawyers have written legal dramas, including Helena Kennedy
(Blind Justice), Rudy Narayan (Black Silk) and John Batt (The Main Chance and
Justice), but the best-known barrister-turned-writer is undoubtedly John
Mortimer. His most famous creation is Rumpole of the Bailey (BBC, 1975; ITV,
1978-80; 1983; 1987-92), a glorious mixture of comedy and resignation, starring
Leo McKern as the eponymous Old Bailey 'hack'. Mortimer was himself played by
Simon Callow in 'The Trials of Oz' (Performance, BBC, tx. 9/11/1991), which
artfully pointed up the absurdities in one of the last major British obscenity
trials, making even the recent past appear positively alien.
The traditional law template has been varied with some success by combining
it with other genres and moving it away from recognisable contemporary
surroundings. Dennis Potter's Son of Man (BBC, tx. 16/4/1969) and Jesus of
Nazareth (ITV, 1977) feature extended treatments of the judgement of Christ
before his crucifixion, while Jean Anouilh's 'The Lark' (Play of the Week, ITV,
tx. 28/8/1962) presented the trial of Joan of Ark. There have, however, been few
British legal dramas more exotic than Rudolph Cartier's production of Rashomon
(BBC, tx. 3/3/1961), set in 12th century Japan, or Judge Dee (ITV, 1969), about
a real-life magistrate in China during the Tang dynasty.
Other examples of genre crosspollination include the entire 23rd series of
Doctor Who (BBC, 1963-89; 2005- ), entitled 'The Trial of a Time Lord' (tx.
6/9-6/12/1986) which saw Colin Baker's Doctor being charged with transgressing
the 'First Law of Time'. The Courtroom (Channel 4, 2004) was Phil Redmond's
short-lived attempt to create a legal soap. Many popular Victorian and Edwardian
novels have also included courtroom climaxes, as in Anthony Trollope's The
Pallisers (BBC, 1974) and E.M. Forster's A Passage To India (Play of the Month,
tx. BBC 16/11/1965), while Charles Dickens' Bleak House (BBC, 1959; 1985; 2005)
is a mordant satire on the British judiciary, dissecting the fallout from the
seemingly endless case of 'Jarndyce v Jarndyce'.
Whether exploring the working of military tribunals in such series as Court
Martial (ITV, 1965-66) and The Brief (ITV, 1984), or the relationship between
courtroom proceedings and the police's investigations in Lynda La Plante's
sombre, split-screen series Trial and Retribution (ITV, 1997- ), or producing
such campaigning works as Paul Greengrass's docudrama The Murder of Stephen
Lawrence (ITV, 18/1/1999), television legal dramas have over the years continued
to successfully prove their strength, resilience and relevance as a popular
genre.
Sergio Angelini
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