Criminal justice

[Logan Mountstuart]

Is nobody else watching this? It's an excellent alternative view to the sadly prevalent "prison's too cushy, too soft on criminals" climate. Up to now a really damning depiction of our wonderful, adversarial judicial system.

A good performance by Ben Wishaw. You can smell the fear as he goes from one ordeal to the next.

I wonder what fucking "Gaunty" would have to say about this? Probably dismiss it as lefty, BBC propaganda, I suppose.

[Logan Mountstuart]

Criminal justice

This is probably a better review than anything I can manage.

It really struck me too how the system doesn't differentiate between the convicted and those not yet proven guilty.

[EIM]

Criminal justice

I'm watching it and finding it unrelentingly grim.

[Jimski]

Criminal justice

I am rather gripped by it - no idea how close it is to reality, but it is relentlessly dark and grim.

[Wyatt Earp]

Criminal justice

Too grim for me. I bailed out.

[Guest]

Criminal justice

They've slightly backed themselves into a corner in that although it is very grim, it's also shaping up into an against-all-odds courtroom air-puncher, starting last night when Ben's lovely inexperienced barrister suddenly pulled a cracking cross-examination out of her ass. The last scene in prison last night was super-grim, though. Wishaw's resemblance to Jared Leto in Requiem For A Dream helped.

[Gangster Octopus]

Criminal justice

I watched it briefly last night 'cos I found out that a mate's in it. I saw that he's playing a prison warder before finding the whole thing far too depressing and watching last Saturday's SpongeBob instead...

[Guest]

Criminal justice

Has any of this turned up on Rapidshare yet?

[Guest]

Criminal justice

It's worth tracking down if so. (I just realised my previous post neglected to mention that it's, like, really good and stuff.)

[EIM]

Criminal justice

I'm only preserving with it because of the court room stuff. I find the prison bits quite traumatic and uncomfortable. Yet it manages to keep you watching by being thoroughly gripping.

[Guest]

Criminal justice

The Pete Postlethwaite character was a bit convenient, I thought - they could have cranked up the grim reality a bit more by just having Ben (not be able to) work things out for himself. Still, as people are evidently struggling to get through the episodes anyway, I guess they did the right thing.

[Logan Mountstuart]

Criminal justice

Yes, Im a bit worried too that it's inevitably going to head towards a reasonably happy and miraculous ending. I suppose they have to compromise a bit or it could just be construed as mere one-sided propaganda.

But the mere fact that it might get over to people who suspected otherwise, that going through the system, whether guilty or innocent is not a pleasant or easy experience, as it is so often portrayed by most of the media.

[Gangster Octopus]

Criminal justice

Parasites don't like it.

[Guest]

Criminal justice

Profession In Not Liking How TV Portrays Profession Shock.

I suppose to be fair, even if he does get off in fantastically unlikely circumstances, the point about his experiences at the police station, in prison and (to an extent) in court won't really have been unmade.

[Mighty Mudhsuden]

Criminal justice

I haven't seen any of it. Is it a Scum for the 2000s-type thing?

[boris]

Criminal justice

It is very gripping - even my ten year old watches it, and then asks very inconvenient questions (what were they putting into his arm? what happened in the shower? what was that pill they ate? etc). It's also available on the BBC i-player, in case you missed any episodes (as is, conveniently, Saturday's Doctor Who, which I missed at the time).

[Logan Mountstuart]

Criminal justice

Blimey. You let your 10 year old watch it? My 13 year old got a glimpse of the second episode and has been hammering at the sitting room door every night.

I've taken to taping it and thinking about letting her see it. Maybe I'm too protective.

Tonight is the last episode. I have to pick up said daughter at 10 oclock (when it starts here) from a party and then get up at 3. Somehow, I just know I'm going to end up staying up until half past midnight watching the tape. Still, 3 hours sleep has been pretty normal for the past 9 years.

I've also just realised that Ben Wishaw was in Perfume. I knew I'd seen him before.

[Jimski]

Criminal justice

What did people think of the ending then? It still managed to stay rather dark, despite Ben not staying in prison. I wasn't sure I understood the whole Box thing.

[Guest]

Criminal justice

I've also just realised that Ben Wishaw was in Perfume. I knew I'd seen him before.

Ha, this had me scuttling off to his Wikipedia page. I thought, "No he wasn't, he's not old enough and in any case, I interviewed them in 1997 for the student paper, I'd recognise him." Then I realised you meant the film, not the third-division Midlands Britpop act.

I thought the last episode was immense. The verdict was a real punch in the gut, especially as I wasn't expecting it so early in the episode. And I liked the way almost everyone ended up damaged by the case. It did accelerate madly at the end, though. (Jimski: Box saw the local gangster on the tape but didn't want to even try to bring him in without Freddie Graham's say-so, so once Graham refused to name him he kept quiet, whilst trying to assuage his guilt by counselling Ben on how to get parole. This gaff was blown when Hooch named the guy, but how exactly Ben's brief managed to convince everyone that what Hooch said was true was rather glossed over.)

[Guest]

Criminal justice

I watched this over the course of the week, and enjoyed the majority of it but was disappointed at how much it withered in the course of the final two episodes. It looked like real metal fatigue on the part of the writer and director.

Disagreeing with the Horse, I thought it was fairly apparent that the verdict was going to be guilty precisely because it happened so early in the episode. There wasn't much chance of him getting off 15 minutes in and then getting sent down again due to some extremely unexpected plot development.

Some very good performances (the main character, the blonde barrister, the sleazy solicitor, Pete Postlethwaite) and some pretty bad ones (the Asian female barrister, the Frederic Forrest-style psycho prisoner, the hard-bitten Scottish copper).

[Guest]

Criminal justice

You didn't like Bill Paterson?! Crikey. I thought he was superb - avuncular and decent but always with a suspicion that he might just be as bad as everyone else underneath it all. I thought the guy playing Milroy was fine as well - all he had to do was look psychotic and he did.

I guess part of the thing with the verdict was that I was so swept away by the drama, I didn't think, hello, this is too early for the verdict to be not guilty; instead I thought, fuck, it's the verdict, I hope he gets off - oh Christ no he hasn't. Mind you, they could have had him go free and then demonstrated that despite this, he and everyone else involved was still screwed. Which they sort of did do at the end.