The Return of "Silk" (Series 2)

(BBC "Silk")

Horace Rumpole relied on the South London crime family, the Timsons, to keep him supplied with adequate draughts of Chateau Embankment, a claret designed to curl your toes.

The return of "Silk" on BBC1 (series 2) introduces us to a new London criminal family, the Farrs, on which Billy, the senior clerk, hopes the future profits of Shoe Lane chambers will rely. But only if their solicitor, the aptly named Mickey Joy, likes the performance of the barristers. By which he doesn't mean their forensic skill but rather their compliance with the larger family concerns.

To say the Farrs are like the Borgias in wickedness is to malign that estimable Florentian family. The Farrs are thugs. Their heavy man, Brendan, pulls out the eyes of his victim. The government having cut legal aid the criminal bar is struggling to keep their horse hair wigs alive. So means to an end....

We see Billy having whisky discussions with Mickey in the local pub. He wants to be the only supplier of barristers to Mickey. And since he's got three barristers on his cases, Billy thinks he's on to a winner if only the barristers play along. But there's the rub.

Enter our dashing new silk (QC), Martha Costello. Working class lass from up north beats posh southern kid, Clive Reader, to the golden prize of Queen's Counsel. (I've already made my views clear on that to the dismay of many barristers.) Martha don't like Mickey because her client, the heavy Brendan, clearly has the IQ of a 5 year old and is being set up by the Farrs to take the fall.

Billy gets Clive to act as her junior in the case. Clive is still smarting from not getting silk and to compensate has bought himself a very powerful Norton motorbike. Clive the posh boy in the Cameron-Osborne mould, is prepared to cut a few ethical corners here and there if it keeps him in well with the clerks.

OK....SPOILER ALERT HERE....

Martha is as naive as Billy is manipulative. Somehow, and you have to suspend disbelief here, she persuades the jury that Brendan, all 6 foot 7 inches and 250 pounds of him, is a hard done by lad. Instructed to remove the victims eyes, nose, ears, tongue and fingers, he only takes out the eyes because he's kind. Then he calls 999 (or 911). Instead of taking the fall, he's acquitted.

You can see what's coming next, can't you? The Farrs are pissed off. So just before Martha is to take her silk victory lap up Middle Temple Lane, Billy gets a call to say that Brendan's eyes, ears, etc have been removed and he's dead.

Martha's heart is in the right place but she's seriously lacking street smarts. I hope her new wig keeps her brain warm.

As much as "Silk" irritates me, I enjoy it. And I classify watching it as work which most people can't do. So I'll be in for the whole series. More to come.

One point: these TV series about barristers are incestuous. In 2000 there was a better TV show called "North Square" about a set of barristers chambers in Leeds. The actor who plays Mickey, Phil Davis, was the senior clerk, Peter, in "North Square" (even more Machiavellian than Billy) and Clive (Rupert Penrys-Jones) was one of the barristers, Alex--again a posh boy.

Both "Silk" and "North Square" were created by the same writer, Peter Moffat, a British playwright.

Then, would you Adam and Eve it, Phil Davis (Mickey/Peter) and Rupert Penrys-Jones (Clive/Alex) both turn up in another TV show called "Whitechapel" (2009) about copycat Jack the Ripper murders where Rupe is the posh, naive, educated CID inspector and Phil is the trustworthy, university of life trained sergeant.

At this rate they'll take over every legal TV show going....Stop!

The Return of "Silk" (Series 2)

How Complex Can Spiral Be?

(thanks to Tate Gallery)

Matisse's L'escargot shows a spiral deconstructed into a medley of elements. In a way it looks simple but mathematically spirals are excruciatingly complicated. There are Fibonacci spirals; spirals that look like M.C. Escher designed them; and there are spherical helices called Loxodromes. Have a look at this page if you're not satiated by these.

For mind-bending complexity Spiral on BBC4 has them beaten. This spiral is (un)winding over 12 episodes and each one appears to add extra, virtually impossible, dense layers of intricacy, perhaps becoming a clothoide (a double spiral).

Take Judge Roban's trainee, Arnaud, who is the son of a lost lover reclaimed. Arnaud discovered Roban breaking into his own chambers to stage a robbery and blackmailed him to keep away from his mother. Then Arnaud is lured into a honey trap by Roban's brother who is involved with a corrupt mayor--a touch of the Chirac or Sarkozy here--and to prevent his sexual dalliance with a minor becoming public Arnaud must disclose facts about the investigation. Roban suspects Arnaud and despite Arnaud's original blackmail finds himself in his lover's arms again. Arnaud finds his mother and Roban in bed together and despairs. Can there be more? Yes, there is....

Honey traps are abounding in Spiral. The fine, upstanding ex-prosecutor, Pierre, has been ensnared on false charges by a young client who sponges on Pierre's good nature. Pierre is accused of rape. The questioning by the police inspector is clenchingly personal.

"Are you married?"
"No."
"Did your wife divorce you or you her?"
"What does it matter who divorced who?"
"Let me call your ex-wife and see if she remembers...."
"OK, she divorced me."
"How many affairs have you had since the divorce?"
"Two or three."
"That's not many for two or three years of separation. Do you masturbate?"
And on, all at 3am.

Pierre, having split from his law partner, Josephine, because of her corruption, has to call on her to represent him as, in her words, she thrives on such cases. In a nice touch Josephine passes Laure, the police inspector with whom Pierre had had an affair in Series One, and they commiserate over Pierre's plight.

And so Spiral (or Engrenages in French) moves on. I've only touched on the surface of some the plots, sub-plots, sub-sub-plots, ad infinitum that the programme is spinning out. It's the best thing on television and it knocks spots off anything I've seen on American or British TV. Only The Killing (from Denmark and also on BBC4) comes close. One feature that Spiral and The Killing share is the luxury of letting the series develop organically (do I really mean that?) over 12 episodes. There's no feeling of rushing towards a premature resolution. We have time to think about the way the series goes which is another feature, Spiral does make you think.

How Complex Can Spiral Be?

British Legal Drama, Barristers and Those Stupid Wigs...

The BBC is running a new legal drama called Silk. I watched my first episode tonight and the verdict: dire.

It is plodding, panders to prejudice and convention, and looks tired. Something goes wrong when the Brits do legal drama. OK, that's a sweeping generalization, but it's not too far wrong. And this show makes it seem so even more.

If you want to see good ones then you have to go back to North Square and Rumpole. Admittedly the last is a joke yet it's a good joke and much missed. North Square, perhaps because it was based in Leeds, did have a grittiness about. It's real secret, however, was the clerk, McLeish.

In Silk all the stock characters are there. The ambitious one, the driven woman who has doubts about her femininity, the insecure one, and the hard-bitten trainee who will get the job at any price. Then they plod to the courts and do their schtick. In this episode every member of chambers, including the prosecutor, was present in court--extremely incestuous.

Rather like North Square the only character that interests me is the barrister's clerk. He's usually the guy (rarely a woman: in fact never on TV) in the sharp suit (better tailor than his barristers) accompanied by a quasi-Cockney accent and who smokes. No one else does, of course. He's the one who gets the work and does the necessary dirty deeds.

In this episode a black female barrister, Kate, accuses the clerk, Billy (always called by their first names), of not wanting to persuade solicitors to pay her fees. She catches him in the hallway and demands he gets her aged fee of £9000. He claims to have tried, but she won't have it and says he is pandering to the solicitors in order to get higher paying work for senior barristers at her expense. In the programme it's clearly true.

Later we see the first junior clerk--also black--reporting to Kate that he has got at least half of her aged fee. Gosh, lines are drawn between the avant-garde and the oldies in chambers. Does this mean revolution is in the wind? Would they ever get rid of those stupid horse hair wigs? The Bar has survived for over 500 years so far so no breath-holding, please.

Yes, we see soft-hearted lawyers trying their damnedest for their clients and hardened types who say just get on with it...lose some, win some... Yes, every bloody cliche in the book (oops, that's one) is thrown at us. And apparently there is QC who is the legal adviser to the show. I would advise her to have her name removed quickly or do an Alan Smithee.

Despite all that, I'm probably going to watch it again. I'm a sucker for these shows, but at least I can write it off as work (yes, I was doing my research last night...) which is more than you can.

British Legal Drama, Barristers and Those Stupid Wigs...