Law and Order: UK

[altariel]

I just left this comment in communicator's post on Law and Order: UK, and since it pretty much sums up what I thought, I'm copying, tweaking, and pasting.

As you know, Bob, I adore Law and Order, and I thought this was a pretty decent stab at it. I felt there weren't quite enough twists in the police story (L&O generally weaves around a hell of a lot in the first 20 minutes) and there was the notorious stock TV scene-ender at one point ("Oh, and [character]?" [character pauses at door and looks back questioningly] "Thanks." [character beams and leaves]) [1].

The legal scenes didn't capture that sense of civic society being constructed and enacted in the court-room (which programmes like L&O and Boston Legal do so well); partly because we, er, don't do that so much in the UK. mraltariel was saying last night that given the UK court system is about weighing competing narratives, it might work better dramatically to have cutaways as people gave evidence, like in Without a Trace.

[1] As noted in Rusty's The Writer's Tale.

Comments

[manna]

Do we think of ourselves as participating in civic society in the same way over here?

I'm not sure about this, based largely on the entirely anecdotal feeling that I've seen a lot more Americans complaining about having to do jury duty than I have Brits, and also asserting that only stupid people are on juries because all the smart ones can manage to get out of it.

There's something generic about the setting, and I'm not quite sure it's got to the heart of what happens when we (the British) go about the business of dispensing justice.

Thinking about it some more, I wonder if most of the weakness of the show is simply that it's trying to apply the constraints of the L&O franchise formula in the wrong cultural background. The fact that they have the CPS running around talking to witnesses suggests that they haven't put too much effort into trying to actually *adapt*, more search-and-replaced the job description. Was it you we were talking with at Redemption about how American adaptations of UK comedy shows are usually crap? Maybe this is just another case of a show wilting after being transplanted into a non-native setting.

Hmm. American legal dramas and realities

[(Anonymous)]

It's true, a lot of Americans are very cynical about jury duty, and approach it primarily from the perspective of personal economics. The process can be long, you get paid minimum wage, and the competitive elimination of jurors by the two attorneys often seems aimed at eliminating thoughtful, intelligent, or just well-educated people from juries, along with anyone who has even an incidental connection with law-enforcement or the legal professions or whose ideological commitments may not make a juror sympathetic to either the prosecution or the defense attorney. I don't know the inner workings of the British jury selection system, but Americans get very worked up over the stupidities in our own selection system and are very worried economically to boot. A lot of people probably wouldn't object if there were professional jurors, because they think at least those people would know something about the law and wouldn't have to worry about their pay checks or the problems of caring for relatives, etc.

Despite the mundane realities of jury duty, with all its irritations, I wouldn't discount the notion that for us, the courtroom is the place where common sense - which is really what a jury is supposed to provide, protection from judgment that comes from the sophisticated heights of an elite society that has lost contact with what happens here on the ground - has its say. We think of the courts as both defenders of the existing law, but also as a place where social injustice or questions of what can count as injustice, can be tested, decided on and given a definite form. Granted, it's not the run-of-the-mill jury trials that serve that function in our consciousness: it's the court case that makes its all the way up to the Supreme Court after having gone through different levels of trial by jury and appeal, that sticks in our minds (Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Furman v. Georgia, and the recent 2000 ruling on the outcome of the presidential election).

U.S.-produced legal shows I think take the reassuring sense of finality and of real social impact and meaningfulness that you get from the Supreme Court cases, and they combine it with the original inspiration to trial by jury as protection from the abuse of knowledge and power under color of law. The connection between that glorified, humane common sense and the degraded sense of who your "peers" are when you get to the selection stage isn't one that gets interrogated on television, as far as I know.

But maybe that's why U.S. legal dramas so often force the defense or prosecution lawyer to carry the indignation of common sense and find ways to get the law to show the rightness of things. The jury's presence in the fictional courtroom is essentially anonymous and symbolic - they hand down a piece of paper that certifies or rejects the lawyer's notion of common sense and rightness. We don't see anything from their perspective, because they would be absolutely unable to carry the legal argumentative side of things, to formulate what's at stake, even if there were a way around the random assignment of juries that prevents making one a major recurring character. Twelve Angry Men is probably the one exception to the cop-and-lawyer-focused legal drama format that I've seen, and that was a once-off, not a series.

Dwim

Re: Hmm. American legal dramas and realities

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Absolutely fascinating, thank you. A couple of years ago the BBC produced a semi-dramatized series about a rape trial: the witnesses were actors; the barristers were real lawyers; the jury was made up of twelve public figures. We got footage of the trail, and then the jury's deliberation. Depressing viewing. I gather the actors had several improvization sessions to help them work out their stories, which is something I would have liked to have seen too.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I wonder if most of the weakness of the show is simply that it's trying to apply the constraints of the L&O franchise formula in the wrong cultural background

That was exactly what I was hoping for when I heard this was being made: the strength of the plotting of original L&O, but with a serious attempt to think about how the legal aspect would work in the British context.

When I saw Chris Chibnall's name attached to the project, I set my expectation rating down to sub-Deed. Which meant that the episode the other night was actually a pleasant surprise.

But what I want, what I really really want, is what it says in the title: Law and Order: UK, not Law and Order: Imported from the US With Not Much Thought to How that Transplant Would Work. I think it could be done, but I suppose you'd have to be fairly gutsy to say, "Well, yes, I know this is one of the world's most successful franchise formats, but it ain't going to work here, for these reasons."

[manna]

See, if it had had anywhere close to the cracktastic glee of Deed (or Torchwood), I would've dealt with the awful plotting. But it was just a bit shit, and life's too short to waste on TV that's just a bit shit.

I'll just stick to Cold Case, I think. They're running a 'best of' selection on some channel at the moment which actually seems to have some of the best ones in it.

I think it could be done, but I suppose you'd have to be fairly gutsy to say, "Well, yes, I know this is one of the world's most successful franchise formats, but it ain't going to work here, for these reasons."

Do you really think it would be doable? I'm not sure. I think by the time you'd finish ripping out the parts of L&O which don't work in the UK, there'd be so little recognisably L&O left that L&O fans would be disappointed. And people who don't like L&O would still be avoiding it because of the name, so you'd be screwed both ways.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Do you really think it would be doable?

Oh totally. L&O's distinctiveness really comes from the three-act structure:

1. police
2. police and lawyers
3. courtroom

That structure would work fine, if the second act had the CPS batting the case back until the police had enough evidence (rather than the lawyers out doing investigating), which is what L&O often does anyway. And the third act was more like Crown Court. I actually think TV could do with a good courtroom-drama-of-the-week.

At least they kept the "doink doinks".