Garrows Law: Series Two

I really enjoyed the Garrow's Law series, well worth a watch, lots of great 18th century ambience, and a good story. I really hope there are more episodes coming.

We watched the first season in two nights. Absolutely riveting. The acting was superb all round. The same goes for the second season.

The political mood of the middle 18th C and the courts of that time - as well as the political machinations, vast corruption and desperate thirst for those in power to control the country in every way -- and gain more and more personal wealth and power on the backs of the poorer (politically and legally helpless) citizens of Britain, was presented very well indeed; and this is what the series is really about. This was the time of the burgeoning of abolitionism, (in the 17th C Quakers were vocally anti-slavery) and in the 18th century, rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticized slavery for violating the rights of man. The idea that women should have more (meaning "some") rights was also beginning to take hold, as well as the idea that all citizens should have more rights - which was anathema to those in power. Garrow changed the courts into the adversarial system it is today and coined the phrase, "Innocent until proven guilty". I think this series, is pretty faithful to the times. And it seemed to me, to be a much MUCH better attempt to be OF the times than that ridiculous revisionist series about The Tudors!
And let's face it - good television should have great drama. And this is damn good drama!

The first series of Garrow's Law was very promising, as an historically authentic representation of the workings of the Old Bailey Court, and Garrow's battle to introduce genuine justice for the criminal defendant. My husband (a judge) thought it was brilliant. By episode two of the second series he had washed his hands of it. I persevered through the rest of the series, but it had definitely degenerated into a soap opera about the romantic and professional misfortunes of Garrow and his lady love -- fair enough, if you like that sort of thing, but not what we were hoping for. The series claims to lift its material from actual cases at the Old Bailey, but the writers cannot control their desire to interpret these stories from a thoroughly modern point of view, and the only way they can do this is to play fast and loose with the historical facts and attitudes. Yes, there was a Capt. Jones accused of sodomy -- however, he was motivated not by love but by serial paedophilia. Yes, there was such a thing as "criminal conversation", and Garrow was involved in a very famous case -- however, he represented the wronged husband, and the adulterer (a man looking for a substitute for his deceased wife and finding it in her sister!) admitted his guilt, so they were just haggling (quite dramarically) over the amount of compensation. Garrow's own romantic life was nothing like what the series portrays, and was, in my view, much more mysteriously interesting than what the writers have created out of whole cloth. The writers were not, of course, obliged to stick religiously to the actual facts of Garrow's life, but in trying to create extra drama they also created ridiculous anachronisms and fictions. Very disappointing. I am not likely to purchase the next series.