The Escape Artist: Review
The Escape Artist – Netflix
Review by Jeremy Hall 42BR Chambers
‘But you do know this is absolute bollocks don’t you’ I said, conversationally but with a hint of irritation. My wife clearly didn’t think so. Her refusal to acknowledge my comment signalled her own irritation with me. She was rather enjoying watching a TV drama about a successful and attractive male barrister winning cases. The unspoken implication being that this made a change from watching the potato sitting on the sofa beside her. But the ‘absolute bollocks’ observations became louder and more persistent, until Philippa eventually went and did something else, muttering about watching the end of it when I wasn’t there.
The drama in question is called ‘The Escape Artist’ and was first aired 12 years ago on the BBC, but Netflix have just acquired it. According to mailonline (my only source of information and news, natch), everyone is watching it and giving it a rave reviews – ‘the sort of drama they should be making nowadays’ said someone on a platform somewhere.
So we decided to watch it, given that this was one of our planned dry weekday nights, and with an otherwise empty evening stretching out before us.
The action centres on criminal barrister Will Burton who has aspirations for silk (yawn) played by a very young looking David Tennant. The cast is fantastic, and they all deliver their lines so well it makes the programme seem watchable, if your involvement was limited to sticking your head round the door every 10 minutes.
The plot is so absurd that it became the second main source of entertainment. The first, by a distance, is the hilariously cack-handed court and chambers scenes. A sort of cross between a 4th rate Rumpole remake without any of the jokes, and a tasteless slasher movie. The baddie, brilliantly played by Toby Kebbell, is signposted in the first scene as a wrong’un when we see him feeding some caged songbirds in his grimy flat and not caring that some of the seed goes on the floor. His behaviour gets worse, of course.
Meanwhile we learn that Will has ‘never lost a case’ and has come first in some sort of official poll published in a legal magazine which rates the nation’s best barrister. Cue a grudge match with Maggie, the barrister who came second, played superbly by Sophie Okonedo, who crosses swords in court with him for the remainder of the series. You don’t need me to tell you that it all kicks off between the three of them down at the Bailey.
The chambers scenes are full of the sort of characters that populated legal dramas in the 1980s. The head of chambers and his coterie look like a posse fresh from lunch at the Garrick, muttering about ‘the reputation of chambers’. Briefs – refreshingly old-school ones with ribbon – are dropped from height onto desks by clerks from central casting. The only preparation the barristers seem to do in murder trials is to undo the ribbon and stare in a horrified way at the police photos of dead people covered in blood, before taking off their reading glasses and looking meaningfully into the distance.
Witnesses aren’t cross-examined. Their role is to stand there as counsel make polemical speeches, and are then invited to agree. Not satisfied with the evidence of one expert witness, our hero applies for an adjournment to get another. This prompts the puce old judge to threaten him with contempt of court, for reasons which aren’t entirely clear. Other perfectly standard procedural disputes take place in the judge’s room, replete with shouting matches, hurling down of papers, and storming out. Submissions of no case to answer are allowed in the face of what is clearly a mountain of evidence against the baddie. And this is the accurate bit. Avoiding spoilers prevents me from delving deeper into the various absurdities, but I promise you’ll enjoy them if you commit properly to this dirge.
It’s a shame, really, because if the producers had bothered employing a lawyer for a couple of hours, the courtroom scenes could have been quite good, particularly with such a fantastic cast. I suspect that most people couldn’t give a monkey’s about the technicalities, and its only haughty old bores like me that get irked by this sort of thing, but still……
As for the bonkers plot? Well, art reflects life, but then I remember that this was made in 2012, so no excuses.
