CLAUS VON BULOW, THE MALE GAZE, THE LAWYER AND LAW & ORDER

Seeing his obituaries this week reminded me I met Claus Von Bulow once. It was almost exactly 20 years ago, in July 1999, at the annual Spectator garden party, at the offices in Doughty Street, back when Boris Johnson was the editor and I was writing the occasional outre review for the estimable Mark Amory, the books editor. As always, it was crowded and warm and the champagne was flowing. I found myself in a group with someone I knew and two other men, one of whom was Bulow. It was all pleasant enough, in a sort of dismissive English upper-class way. Then a woman walked past, attractive with a rather large chest. "Look at those tits," Bulow said, or words to that effect. And a few minutes later, when the same woman walked past again, he called her over, and pointed to me. "My friend here was very complimentary about your breasts, my dear," he said.

I blushed, and stammered some sort of denial, and while he was being charming to the woman I turned to my friend and said "He did it."I did not hang around him much longer; oddly enough I later spoke with the woman, explained, presented my theory as to Sunny Bulow's murder, and we wound up going out for dinner a few weeks later. Nothing came of it, but I thought of her a few years later when David Cameron came to prominence. She did PR for Carlton, as did Cameron, Cameron and Boris were both Bully Boys from the Bullingdon Club, and it occured to me at that point that might have been why she was at the Spectator party. I haven't written for the Speccie in a while; in fact I believe the last party to which I was invited was the one of 7 July 2005, which was cancelled after the bombings at Kings Cross.

There's no need to rehash the case now; but that night it seemed clear to me that 'von' Bulow was a perfect fit for at least one portion of the crowd at a Spectator party. That kind of exclusive club person who's distinctly aware of his own distance from the rest, somewhat creepy if you weren't impressed by what passed for charm. I could see where he would be entertaining, how he'd be invited to parties even without the notoriety. But the notoriety made him irresistible; hosts using him just as he was using them.

It's interesting that his attorney who won him a second trial was Alan Dershowitz, whose book Reversal Of Fortune formed the basis of the movie. Jeremy Irons won his Oscar for that one in large part for being able to project ambiguity, but there was a more interesting version of the murder made as an episode of Law & Order, series 4 episode 5, called 'Black Tie' (1993). It is basically the same insulin-based murder case, but the sexes of victim and suspected killer have been reversed.

The victim is the husband, the accused is the wife, who despite her protestations of being blase about their separate lives, knew her husband was planning to divorce her for his mistress. It presents the issues clearly, most importantly Dershowitz's main point was that evidence obtained by investigators hired by the children had no right to search, as they were acting as de facto agents of the police. The Law & Order casting was perfect: Caroline Lagerfelt was her icy best as the wife; the amazing Viveca Lindfors was the maid who suspects foul play, and Beverly Johnson was good as the mistress. John McMartin, whose face you would recognise, is the family lawyer, and Jeffrey DeMunn plays the Dershowitz figure: a law professor whose recurring part on L&O was as the 'disinterested' lawyer who is always hired by rich clients and proceeds because he allegedly is pursuing points of law.

DeMunn is an elegant, sharp-edged actor, with an intense gaze that can make him seem haughtily detached; he and Lagerfelt made a good pair. In fact,  Dershowitz has been remarkably well-served on screen, with Ron Silver playing him in Reversal, all noble energy, more private eye than law professor, and Evan Handler in The People vs OJ Simpson perhaps not quite so flattering, but very small-town (Harvard) academic. That's interesting, once you throw DeMunn into the mix, because not by their actors but by their clients you shall know them.

CALIFORNICATION GETS JUSTIFIED: ON IN-FLIGHT SYNCHRONICITY, NATALIE ZEA AND NATASCHA MCELHONE,

While flying to and from London, Los Angeles and Auckland on Air New Zealand I managed to watch the entire fifth series of Californication (the only other time I'd seen the show was watching what I think was the third, when I made the same trips back in February and March of 2012). I also rewatched the whole first series of Justified.

Californication gets better when you can watch a storyline through—individual episodes often seem disjointed or lacking in depth, but that isn't unusual in half-hour comedies. David Duchovny's aptly-named Hank Moody is played with a great amount of passivity as well, and that makes it hard to follow his arc, as he might say, in an individual episode. So the whole of a season really is more than the sum of its parts. Series five also offers Natascha McElhone, as Karen, a chance to be more than just the epitome of the ideal goddess, though she does play that, and she does well with it, especially a scene on the beach at night which takes itself out of the usual rhythm of her interplay with Duchovny.

What struck me most was the change in approach between series 3 and 5. The former was more about Hank, as a writer (and teacher) and fell very much into the almost-but-never-quite passe genres of so-called dirty realism and campus fiction. He is a self-regarding frustrated writer who looks for comfort and insight in the brief pleasures available to such people when they are attractive and witty. It was funny, but there was a melancholy hanging over the show that it seemed unable to dodge but at the same time unwilling to accept.

By the fifth series, however, the show has morphed into more of a sitcom, a new millennium's version of The Honeymooners, with a bit of The Life Of Riley and a little Love That Bob thrown in. Thus we have the classic two couples scenario, but they've been doubled: Hank is not Ralph Kramden, he's too smart and less self-deluded for that, but if you put him together with Karen's new husband Richard (Jason Beghe) he gets closer. Karen is very much Alice though. Similarly, Evan Handler's Runcle, who is often the real comic focus of the show, is doubled with the excellent Stephen Tobolowsky to create a single Ed Norton for Pamela Adlon's Marcy to shriek about.

That morphing is made easier by the switch of the focus from Hank's writing books to the film industry, which allows freer reign for sexual sitcomming that often comes close to Feydeau farce. It also gets the best out of Handler, to the extent that Daniel Benzali gets to play a brilliant cameo as the agent Runcle would be when he grows up. This is not to say the darkness is completely gone: every time Hank's daughter Becca (Madeleine Martin) comes on stage we are reminded of that, in case we needed reminding.

The fifth series ends on an exceedingly dark note, courtesy of Natalie Zea, and this is where the in-flight synchronicity was awesome, as I was watching her alternately as Winona in Justfied and here as the New York-based Carrie (a light nod to Sex In the City there), who starts off as a breath of realistic air in Hank's life, and ends up as a bunny-boiler. The scene where, at a dinner party with the other two couples, she realises Hank doesn't love her, and announces she 'gave him her ass', which he shouldn't have taken if he didn't, is spectacular.

Zea is brilliant in this context, and looking back at Justified's first season I appreciated her a little more. In fact, I found both her and Joelle Carter's performances more nuanced than I had the first time around—Carter's is hidden under a surface sexiness and Zea's behind a surface of mundanity, both of which they manage to undercut, at least on second viewing.In terms of ensemble cast, Justified is hard to beat, and if not comedy, there are very Elmore Leonard-esque moments of irony in every show.

I liked that opening year of Justified even more the second time around, and I found Californication more fun with series five. Even if I already feel Natscha McElhone's disappointment in series six.