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Sunday, October 11, 2009

Some thoughts on Criminal Justice Series 2

3:04 PM / Television / No Comments

The television miniseries (or serial) is something of a lost art. British television dramas tend to take one of two forms: (1) one-off or two-part standalones, or (2) longer-running, multi-season productions of varying length. Wikipedia defines a miniseries as "a single finite story told in separately broadcast episodes."

Last year, BBC1 brought the concept of the miniseries back with Criminal Justice, a five-hour piece broadcast in one-hour blocks over the course of a single week. Scripted by a former barrister, Peter Moffat (who also created Kavanagh QC and North Square), it offered a gripping and frankly terrifying look at the British justice system, focusing on a young man (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer's Ben Whishaw) accused of murdering a woman and his desperate battle to clear his name, hampered at every turn by an unjust and corrupt system. The series attracted no small amount of criticism from members of the legal profession for the negative light in which it was depicted but, as the saying goes, the truth hurts sometimes... even if, as per one of the most iconic lines of the serial, "the truth can go to hell."

In spite of the controversy (or perhaps because of it), it was a big success in terms of both critical reaction and viewing figures, so it's not entirely surprising that it was brought back this year for a second series, which finished airing on Friday. Does that mean it's no longer a miniseries? I'm not sure, but there seems little point in getting caught up in semantics, given that the end result was once again excellent. Taking the same basic concept, Moffat weaved a dramatically different story around a completely different cast of characters, the protagonist this time being Juliet (played by Maxine Peake), a shrew-like housewife who stabbed her husband, a well-liked, successful barrister in the public eye but a manipulative, abusive control freak behind closed doors.

Whereas, in the first series, it was unclear until near the very end whether Whishaw's character actually did commit murder (he had no memory of having done it but, as the prosecution pointed out, that doesn't automatically mean he didn't), the questions posed in Series 2 were considerably different. This time, there was no doubt that Juliet stabbed her husband: we saw her pick up the kitchen knife, take it into the bedroom and plunge it into his chest. It wasn't even so much a question of "why": we, the audience, could see that she was a virtual prisoner in her own home and that her husband effectively subjected her two a 24-hour cycle of systematic mental (and occasionally sexual) abuse. The mystery element, if you can call it that, emerged in the form of whether or not Juliet would admit to herself and others what her husband had done to her, and whether she would ultimately be convicted of murder or manslaughter.

Series 2 ultimately proved to be more domestically oriented than its predecessor, spending nearly as much time with family members and acquaintances as with Juliet herself. I was impressed by the almost languid pace at which the events unfolded - a rare treat given modern television's tendency towards action, action action and not "wasting" a second lest the audience lose interest and change channels. Personally, I have nothing against fast-paced storytelling and will happily watch frenetic nail-biters like Spooks, which crams a massive amount of material into each hour-long episode, but Criminal Justice's slower, more deliberate pace ultimately proved to be more rewarding. As much as it was an exposé into the shady goings-on in the legal profession and the police force, it served first and foremost as a character study, with Moffat and Maxine Peake painting a frighteningly convincing portrait of a victim of domestic abuse - someone who, regardless of the outcome, was going down, and in a sense was doomed even before the opening credits began.

Can we have a Series 3, please? And, while we're at it, how about releasing Series 1 and 2 on BD? Both were shot and broadcast in high definition, but only DVDs seem to be available (for Series 1) or announced (for Series 2).

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