The Trial gives a depiction that would stand up in court
To get to the juice, television drama fillets the realities of the justice system. Even Line of Duty, despite its commitment to procedural verisimilitude, trades in hyperventilating fantasy, while Three Girls last week dramatised only a minuscule proportion of a lengthy trial. The Trial: A Murder in the Family (Channel 4) positions itself as a salutary corrective.
The idea is to explore the internal workings of a criminal court through a made-up case. A fictional university lecturer stands trial for murdering his estranged wife. They, and various witnesses, are well played by actors. The barristers are real and play themselves, roles with which they are of course thoroughly familiar. “The jury don’t want theatricals or drama,” opined Max Hill QC, prosecuting. John Ryder QC, defending, didn’t seem to have got that memo.
Even factual television needs stars, and the star here is Ryder, who has a barrister’s flamboyant turn of phrase. “One has to start,” he explained, “from the position that you’re a goal or two down.”
From my memory of jury duty, it mostly feels authentic, and the invented murder has the firm untitillating smack of ordinariness. I would have welcomed more of an opening clarification of the fundamental right to a fair trial. Also there could have been something on the strict injunction on jurors from talking in small groups, or researching the case away from the court.
It was at its best when exploring the reality that juries are a composite of human experiences. The 12 members of the public selected saw more of the trial than the audience, who got the edited highlights, alongside home video footage, which felt like a distracting visual sop. Jurors also don’t get a soundtrack to prod along the story.
It meant that we got to know the victim. Does it matter that the murdered woman is played by Emma Lowndes, mainly known for wanting to keep Lady Edith’s baby in Downton Abbey? (From this week, she’s also Ginny Potter in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in the West End.) Probably not. Michael Gould was plausible and naturalistic as the accused, Simon Davis. The first episode passed the basic test: you want to keep on watching, though whether it’s entirely for the right reasons is cause for reasonable doubt.
TV’s most popular detectives spend Sunday nights working out whodunit before they are killed off themselves. It happened to Jane Tennison, Morse, Lewis, Poirot and many lesser lights, and now
Inspector George Gently (BBC One) is for the chop. “We need a decision about your retirement,” said a slithery new assistant chief constable. “All the greats know when to hang up their gloves.”
Is Gently a great? ITV might test his greatness with a prequel series, in the style of Endeavour, featuring a younger Gently before his wife was murdered. The shows could probably carry on as you were if Martin Shaw didn’t look quite so obviously septuagenarian. He is a stalwart leading man with a solid fanbase, but to me he always seems too mannered for the small screen. It’s as if he’s been trying to act away the overshadowing memory of The Professionals that made him famous in the 1970s.
It came full circle in this new episode, the first of two feature-length films, neither of which were written by series creator Peter Flannery. This week’s rumpty-tumpty cold case allowed the script to furrow its brow about women’s rights. It yielded a pair of affecting performances from Anamaria Marinca and Victoria Bewick as a mother and daughter sundered by a miscarriage of justice.
Meanwhile, Gently’s younger colleague Detective Sergeant Rachel Coles had discrimination in the workplace to deal with. “Are you married to a policeman then?” a woman asked at a police boxing gala. “I am a policeman,” she said gently (but firmly). Played with lovely composure by Lisa Mcgrillis, she feels like a younger version of Brenda Blethyn’s Vera, who works the same Northumbrian patch. A spin-off series featuring Coles would be a genuinely welcome development.
Meanwhile, Gently had a falling out with his protégé John Bacchus (Lee Ingleby), whose policing back in 1962 was found to exhibit period shoddiness. Ingleby, an authentic actor who is adept at inner conflict, was the victim of police corruption in Line of Duty. Here the boot was on the other foot. Next week, Inspector Gently goes all AC-12 and polices the police. And then he’ll hang up his mac. About time.
The Trial: A Murder in the Family Inspector George Gently