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.

LAW AND ORDER: TWO SEPARATE BUT EQUALLY IMPORTANT THOUGHTS

Happily, although the series ended after a record-tying run of 20 seasons, there is always a Law & Order episode playing on television somewhere in the world. While watching one on Channel 5 last night, I started thinking about a dual conundrum in the opening credits, which reminded me of another one I've pondered for years. Since it was late, I thought I'd share these.

'In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate but equally important groups: the police, who investigate crimes, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders...."

Listening to the famous opening, it struck me perhaps for the first time that if there's anything Law & Order shows us, it's that the police and DAs are certainly NOT separate groups. They may not always work in concert, but they are joined at the legal hip. More importantly, however, DAs do NOT prosecute offenders: they prosecute the accused offenders. It's not as if everyone prosecuted over 19 seasons of L&O has been guilty as charged.

In the opening credits, the characters are divided into 'Law' (the police) and 'Order' (the DAs), but surely this is backwards. It is the police who protect order, while the attorneys enforce and play with the law, a concept which, if the show teaches us anything, has little to do with justice, criminal or otherwise. Somehow I doubt this matters to anyone but me.

I'd just picked up L&O in series 18 on Channel 5, and I was thinking that this grouping was as good as any I'd seen since the Jerry Orbach days. It was perfect for Sam Waterson to take the District Attorney's role when Fred Thompson left to return briefly to politics; Thompson never convinced as a New York politician, but then none of the successors have ever caught the nature of the role as well as Stephen Hill did. Linus Roache plays the ADA part somewhere between Michael Moriarty and Waterson, and Alana de la Garza is the best second chair since Jill Hennessy or Carey Lowell. Meanwhile, on the police side (Order, remember?) S. Epatha Merkerson was getting more space, which is good, and the chemistry between Jeese Martin's Green and Jeremy Sisto's Lupo recalls the days of Orbach with a number of partners.

Of course, I no sooner thought about this than I discovered the episode I was watching was the one where Martin leaves the show, written out and replaced by Anthony Anderson, who's going to have a hard time getting a balance with Sisto. Knowing the series has only two more seasons beyond this is not encouraging, especially as the 5 in Channel 5 seems to stand for 'get them five years after they run in America and only make them available for five days!'

MICHAEL CONNELLY'S GODS OF GUILT

The Gods of Guilt, Mickey Haller's mentor 'Legal' Siegel reminds him, was Haller's father's term for the jurors in a trial, but, as he says 'there are plenty of people out there judging us every day of our lives for every move we make. The gods of guilt are many. You don't need to add to them.'

Mickey has just won a mistrial by using in court a manoeuvre that has nothing to do with justice and very little to do with law, one that he learned from Legal. He's just smuggled a french dip sandwich into Siegel's room at the old folks home, bending or ignoring the rules just as surely as they would have done in the courtroom. But Haller is about to have his own guilty gods visit him, when he gets called on to defend an accused murderer, an internet pimp named Andre LaCosse. LaCosse has been referred to him by the victim, whom Haller knew and defended under a different name, but who always called him her 'Mickey Mantle', the New York Yankee baseball star. Haller thought he'd saved Gloria Dayton, as he knew her, and helped her start a new life in Hawaii. Now she's lying dead in an LA apartment, and Haller can't escape feeling the obligation guilt invokes.

Even worse, he realises quickly that LaCosse is innocent, and as we know well Haller's worst nightmare is an innocent client. There is a great comparison to be drawn here with his half-brother Harry Bosch: Bosch is driven by his sense of justice, while Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer, is driven by a chaffeur in his town car. Harry is concerned with the result, Haller with the process. It's like the TV series Law & Order, which got it backward: the cops aren't the 'law' part, that's the lawyers. It's the cops who seek to establish order, and the lawyers who manipulate the law, sometimes in the name of justice, but more often simply to win their battle.

Mickey has another god of guilt driving him; his relations with his daughter are at an all-time low after the events of The Fifth Witness, and he needs for her to see him doing the right thing. Which means that Haller needs to prove his client's innocence, and that means he must become a detective himself. Which becomes both difficult and dangerous, as he discovers Gloria's death may be tied into her testimony against another of his clients, and may drag cops and federal agents into the mix.

It's a story that weaves deeper and deeper, with Haller and his team functioning like a 21^st century version of Perry Mason and Paul Drake, in a far more dangerous world. The pace is frantic, and sometimes chaotic, just as you'd expect from the Lincoln Lawyer, but it works primarily because of the motivation: the plot is driven by Haller's own drives, and it is from his perspective that we see it. Connelly's greatest talent may be his ability to convey his stories through his characters, and to remain honest with their point of view, and he does that superbly here.

In my interview with Michael (see the previous post), he made one interesting comment. The producers of The Lincoln Lawyer movie remain interested in doing a sequel, but none of his follow-up books have seemed right to them, because they didn't have Haller himself feeling a sense of a mission, feeling that elusive need for justice which I mentioned at the start. This book does that, which is why Haller seems to move a bit into Harry Bosch territory. People have noticed that Connelly writes courtroom thrillers to match the best of them, but this isn't as much a courtroom novel as a real detective novel, with Mickey Haller needing to prove himself a detective. The pieces do fall together in the end, without gimmick, but it's the getting there that marks Michael Connelly's real talent as a writer.

The Gods Of Guilt by Michael Connelly

Orion £18.99 ISBN 9781409134343

note: This review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

DICK WOLF'S INTERCEPT

The Intercept is Dick Wolf's first novel—but it's hard to look at it outside the context of his long career as the creator of the Law and Order franchise, and in fact, especially in its early sections, this book could be looked at as a script for the pilot of a new series, L&O Anti-Terror. Jason Fisk is a detective in the NYPD Intelligence Division, working in that law enforcement cooperative ground with the FBI, Homeland Security and other national agencies—and the book's opening section contrasts his decisive action on the ground with the more bureaucratic work of the feds, a promising set-up.

But that's just a curtain raiser to the main story—a plot by the now-deceased Osama Bin Laden to strike at a great symbolic target: the dedication of the new Freedom Tower at New York's 911 Ground Zero. And when a hijacking is thwarted in mid-air, and the six passengers become national heroes, the plot gets complicated.

Wolf works his story-telling like a Law and Order episode, switching between scenes and points of view, and it's very effective story-telling. He's built an engrossing plotline, where the reality of at Al Queda plan remains hidden, always a step ahead of Fisk, and the investigators. His characters work well, and what is most interesting is his frankness with the politics of terrorism; Law and Order has always presented the various arguments on all sides of an issue and Wolf shows considerable understanding for the 'other side' as well as some apposite criticism of the anti-terrorist machinery, while never losing sight of the

real issue or real victims.

As the plot is cranked up, the character around whom the twist revolves isn't difficult to spot, and the plot's main twist swings on his acting somewhat out of character for a trained terrorist—something none of the other terrorists do. That's balanced by tragedy, something a pilot episode might not do, but without giving too much away, it inevitably comes down to the chase. There are some moments familiar from other dramas—notably Homeland—both TV and on film, but it's not a copycat, and Wolf has Fisk there to give it a particularly NYPD, Law & Order edge. I read it on an airplane, which gave it a particular frisson, and it's a well-done thriller. One small piece of pedantry: British casualties are not transported from Iraq in coffins covered with 'English' flags. You'd think a British editor might pick up on that!

The Intercept by Dick Wolf

Sphere, £6.99, 9780751551136

Note: This review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)

SODERBERGH'S SIDE EFFECTS: JUDE LAW & DISORDER

There was a point in Side Effects where I realised that what I was watching was an episode of Law & Order with compressed air pumped into it; perhaps it was as I started to envisage Elaine Stritch arguing to Sam Waterston that Rooney Mara had been driven beyond rational understanding by having to watch Jude Law act (call it Jude Law & Disorder?). Then the film began to morph, and starting trying to become an episode of Law & Order as it might have been directed by Alfred Hitchock, or someone thinking maybe he could be the next Hitch.

That may be somewhat harsh to what is an entertaining enough movie that I assume picked up a lot of serious cred because the critics and the Hollywood community saw it as an 'issue' film, and maybe because they were able to compare notes on their own prescriptions. Soderbergh has show he can keep this sort of movie moving along, playing with time sometimes, and, in this case, playing with style as well—imitating commercials, setting New York City backgrounds to reflect characters, and even recreating a perfect Edward Hopper shot. It is a pleasure to follow.

In effect, it's a film of two halves, as Law's British-educated psychiatrist, Jonathan Banks, first finds his career and life falling apart when a patient of his murders her husband while she's suffering side effects of drugs he's prescribed. Then it switches pace as the now rock-bottom Law begins to see a different pattern in what has happened, and manages to outwit the people who have outwitted the law as well as Law. That second half becomes very mechanical, and since some of it has been telegraphed – Catharine Zeta Jones seems always to be shot in a sort of dark-grained Seventies look that is the visual equivalent to those four bass notes on the movie-house organ – not least because horn-rimmed glasses do not a psychiatrist make; she's the least-likely shrink since Barbara Streisand in Prince Of Tides.

Law is actually perfect for the first part of the movie; he's got the classic film noir combination of being too cute for his own good and not half as smart as he thinks he is. He needed to pay attention when Emily tells him 'I thought sick people sometimes make things up.' Thus, as his life collapses around him, he's a break-down about to happen. It is also interesting the way his support system: wife and partners, desert him so quickly—this seems to be one of Soderbergh's major concerns, and indeed when the film is resolved it is with the family put back together, like a Disney film. The point seems to be that New York is rougher than Durham University. And in fact, Vinessa Shaw, as Banks' wife Deidre, seemed to be playing the wife in the film version of Jo Nesbo's Headhunters.

But in the second half, Law somehow manages to outsmart the two women who thus far have shown themselves to be smarter than him, and, in the case of Rooney Mara's Emily, capable of acting him under the table too. He seems to be morphing, with his devil's peak, into Kaiser Sosay. Mara's performance is somewhat flashy, in the sense that, like Tim Robbins in Mystic River, there's a lot of shuffling around, but it's at the edges that she really shines—the character isn't that far removed from Lisbeth Salander, but Mara is probably the challenger to Jennifer Lawrence right now.

Worth noting, however, is the lesbian undercurrent, another similarity with the Salander role. I kept thinking this was some kind of double-level play with Michael Douglas and Fatal Attraction, but it was pretty obvious rather early on that there was something going on, and it was a little disappointing to see that kind of Jerry Falwell male fantasy that has women lovers become husband-killers. Channing Tatum, the husband who's gone to jail for insider trading, and becomes the victim, seems almost as doped up as his wife, whether that's freedom, prison, or the effects of big financial business in New York I could not say. And I'm not sure why Mara's Emily would have to teach Dr Seifert about derivatives if what she were doing was simply shorting pharmaceutical stocks.

But the finish rings false until it gets to the single successful Hitchockian moment, Banks' revenge on Emily, by keeping her medicated in a facility. There are moments of late Fifties Hitch: the interview with Russell Jones excellent as the medical ethics investigator, or even Michael Nathanson's strangely detached DA. But there are others redolent of Law & Order, especially Polly Draper's scene-stealing turns as Emily's boss. In the end, however, as you watch Banks' partners, or the drug company reps, or the characters in the commercials, you begin to wonder if this is Soderbergh's foray into David Cronenberg territory, and how it would have played out had it gone in that direction. Side Effects proves yet again how facile and effective a genre director Soderbergh can be--you get the sense he looks at a script and breaks it down, then puts it back together in his own way, hopping genres. He would have been excellent in the old studio system, if he were allowed to be.

JAMES ARNESS: THE INDEPENDENT OBITUARY

My obit of James Arness, Marshal Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke, is in today's Indy; you can link to it here. It's pretty much as I wrote it, except the bit about the show being retitled 'Gun Law' when it ran in the UK. I had written 'imaginatively retitled', but maybe we're not as self-deprecating as we like to think here in Britain!

Arness was very much like the character he played, low key and modest, and the fact he was content to stay in the same role for 20 years was one of the keys to the show's success and its long run (Law & Order tied it with 20 seasons, but far fewer episodes, and of course a changing cast). I was never a fan, but I'd be curious to go back and see some of the shows now; perhaps the early black and white half-hours, often based on the radio scripts, were harder-hitting. Oddly enough, I am old enough to remember hearing, if not listening, to Gunsmoke on the radio--I'd have to guess I was 3 and my mother was listening.

The Wayne friendship was real, and it must have been a treat for Arness to play Tom Dunson in the TV remake of Red River; though I doubt Bruce Boxleitner carried the impact of Montgomery Clift as Matt.

THE GUARDIAN'S TOP 50 TV DRAMAS

The Guardian's great and good critics selected their 'greatest 50 TV dramas of all time' (you can hit the link here); all-time in this case meaning all-time within the UK, which is reasonable enough since you couldn't really expect them to judge shows their audience has never seen. As usual, such lists are very heavily weighted toward the present; since the TV critic slot is one traditionally given to the editor's roommate at Oxford, next-door neighbour in Islington or the Cotswolds or someone who had actually seen a programme on the wireless, that's to be expected. But the list did throw up some surprises. The biggest one was that an American series, The Sopranos, was judged the greatest of all time (when many would argue it isn't even the greatest imported from HBO). The rest of the top ten (apart from number 4, Mad Men, also from HBO, also tremendous, and current) was filled by British shows, which pointed out another difference: they were primarily in the mini-series format: self-contained movies cut into a limited number of episodes, while the Americans tend to work on the continuing series, which changes the dramatic focus, and almost demands ensemble casts and soap-operay story-lines. Indeed, continuing mini-series, like Prime Suspect (somewhat undervalued at 19) have a distinct advantage over a series like, say Hill St Blues (hugely influential, at number 37--NYPD Blue, its direct descendant, didn't make the cut).

Even in British terms: the only crime series included are Cracker (23), Morse (30) and The Sweeney (47). No Between The Lines? Resnick?, Minder? The Vice? Ghost Squad? And choosing four straight-forward soaps like Coronation Street (26) East Enders (28) Brookside (38) and the best of the lot, Grange Hill (50), is a joke, a pandering to an audience the Guardian doesn't have. All four, but no Dallas?

Obviously, I can only comment about British shows of my youth that made it to America, but though The Prisoner, daring even now and off the charts back then, gets in at 34, there is no place for The Avengers which surely is a landmark whichever side of the ocean you were on. I'd like to see The Saint and Danger Man included too. I have no idea about which shows from 1950s or 1960s America made it over here, though the Twilight Zone does sneak into the chart at 40. I'm pretty sure The Untouchables made it over on ITV and I wonder if The Defenders did. I'm a little surprised American mini-series don't get a look, apart from Band Of Brothers (again, HBO, and with a British lead), but Lonesome Dove seems quality in retrospect; Roots does look a bit too worthy now, but no one appreciated Robert Mitchum's spot-on performance in War & Remembrance.

Nice to see St Elsewhere recognised as the best doctor ensemble show, but perplexing to see 24 (although its format was innovative) and The Shield both in, and no place for Crime Story, Michael Mann's exceptional early 60s show or Homicide, the precursor to the Wire, and very good indeed. Odd to see This Life ('it's not a British Friends', writer Amy Perkins protested over and over again, before anyone had said it was, desperately prompting Brit critics to say how much better than Friends it was. They obliged, and no one noticed it was more a kitchen-sink less glossy 30 Something). Odd to see Buffy at 22 and Battleship Galactica at 25 and not a single western. Nor the newspaper show Lou Grant, a spinoff from Mary Tyler Moore intended as a TV version of All The Presidents Men but closer to The Defenders.

That The Wire comes in at 14, behind Twin Peaks even, seems bizarre. That Six Feet Under is right behind it at 15 seems even more so. Six Feet Under but no Law & Order, which has run over here for years and spawned a British remake that simply copies the original scripts and makes them boring? Where was Edge Of Darkness, maybe the best mini-series of them all? I Claudius? John Adams? LA Law? HBO's Oz got in, which was interesting, but how about Wise Guy, which lasted about as long? Even the first couple of series of Spooks were worth more than Coronation Street. And I saw Guardian readers asking about the German Heimat, but what about those two recent imports to BBC Four, Spiral (France) and Wallander (Sweden), the first exceptional in the mini-series format and the second a tremendous series.

The Six Most Egregious Omissions: The Avengers, Law & Order, Homicide, Edge Of Darkness, Crime Story, Between The Lines

LAW AND ORDER UK REDUX

Since I wrote about the debut of Law & Order UK (here) I've seen four more episodes, and I've noticed something interesting. Unlike the first show, the three shows which followed were all based on classic L&O stories that I remembered well (the first was also an adaptation, just not of an episode I recalled), and each of them fell far short of the original. That made me realise I had judged the first show far more on the basis of what it might be, as opposed to what it was, or more crucially wasn't. So when I saw the fifth entry to the series last night, I was relieved it wasn't a story I recalled vividly, and more than a little surprised that I didn't think it worked all that well.

In general, Law & Order UK is underplayed. L&O at its best has the ability to delineate its new characters quickly and well, the way Robert Parker or Ed McBain do in their books. But the British version finds the parts very much slow-building; actors not so much projecting themselves as allowing the words to do it for them, and the words are not doing it well. Bradley Walsh seems to be playing off Jamie Bamber, all internal control and releasing nuggets of wisdom,rather than making the younger officer play off him. In 'Buried' last night's episode, when the cop who blew the investigation (and beat a gay suspect) 25 years earlier says 'we finally got him', I can't see Jerry Orbach handling the reply 'we?' as a throwaway line, the way Walsh did. Orbach would've milked it with his sourest scowl. In fact, the programme lacks anyone who can scowl properly (although I know Harriet Walter can). Instead, the emoting has a 'let's make the best of it, it'll be all right on the night' attitude, like a soap opera you wait for the inevitable cup of tea. If I were casting, I might reconsider, make Bill Patterson the lead prosecutor and Walter, insanely under-used at present, the DPP.

In the British version, the shows are often played as who-dunnits, but the key clues are similiarly underplayed. In 'Buried', when a young woman says she hasn't seen her parents' house in Lewes, alarm bells were going off everywhere except in the show's cops' heads. It's odd that the writers, in re-doing some of the very best shows, are so cavalier with the key lines. In the previous week's 'Unsafe', a remake of the absolute classic 'American Dream', the key line in the original was when Zeljko Ivanek, relishing his role, crows 'it's not like I haven't done this before', which springs a trap in Michael Moriarty's mind; a similar line in the British version does nothing for Ben Daniels; the revelation strikes him only after he sees records that remind him of what was said.

Daniels is one of the show's major problems. Not that he isn't a good actor, a sort of small-screen version of Jeremy Irons, it's that most of his conflict is internalised; hell, in 'Unsafe' he was reduced to tears of helplessness. The bigger difficulty is that there isn't enough interplay between the CPS and the real villains, the defense attorneys, to provide the chance to emote. They've cast them well, Patrick Malahide in the first show, Colin Salmon in the fifth, but they aren't given chances to go mano-a-mano in a judge's chambers; they don't object; the can't make plea deals the way the American lawyers can. There are no arraignment hearings, set-pieces in each L&O which give a bit-part to a judge who gets to crack wise. Another of the very best L&Os was 'Working Mom', the story of the suburban housewife who kills to protect the secret that she's moonlighting as a high-class call girl. Her lawyer was played by Elaine Strich, running circles round the repressed Moriarty. Leslie Manville was an inspired choice for the role in the remake, but she wasn't given any circles to run.

In fact, the whole episode lacked the bite of the original; I realise we Americans are supposed to be devoid of irony, but isn't 'Working Mom' a better title than 'Vice', just as 'American Dream' had far more connotations than 'Unsafe'. A key part of 'Buried' was the hypnotism of the only witness; in the original the title was 'In Memory Of', again far more telling. Dr Elisabeth Olivet, as played by Carolyn McCormack, had a bigger part in the drama; the British version used the hypnotist as a technician, like it was an episode of Holby City. Again, the emphasis seems to be on the mechanics of the plot, rather than the conflicts or expressions of character.

Olivet was a key figure in the US version of the second show in the series, called 'Born Bad' but here retitled, again as if with a rolling pin, 'Unloved'. It is the episode where the defense is a genetic proclivity to violence, and ends with the child believing himself a freak, and asking for prison. The British version became an exercise in class consciousness, you expected someone from Wife Swap to appear at any moment. And whether it's a natural instinct, the American child actor was able to convey a blank indifference while his English counterpart could do only yobbish aggro.

In the criminal televison series, there are two separate, yet equally important versions. The Americans, who don't mind looking or acting hard-boiled, and the British, who seem intent on keeping everything up on stage; it is the difference, on a small screen, between cinema and theatre, and that's why, when you look at them side by side, the British version, better than most of its domestic counterparts, seems lessened.

VISITING OLD CITY HALL with ROBERT ROTENBERG

My review of Robert Rotenberg's Old City Hall is up at Crime Time, you can find it here. It's the best first novel I've read since Tom Rob Smith's Child 44, and look where that one went. The publisher's blurb compared it to Law & Order, and in fact, it shares many of the strengths of that series. Of course, they also compared it to CSI, and I still can't figure out why! And if you're curious, that's the Old City Hall itself, on the left.

LAW AND ORDER UK: Two separate but equally important shows...

It only occurred to me when Law & Order UK hit its first courtroom scenes that the script, far from being extraordinarily close in content to the original US series, was actually an adaptation of an episode from one of the early years. A little research then revealed that producer/scripter Chris Chibnall had actually chosen 13 of the American shows to adapt, after watching some 150. (Wonder if the L&O version of the Sunny von Bulow killing will be one of them?--and if you're wondering what THAT'S all about, see here)

This trans-Atlantic scripting created quite a bind for the British reviewers, one of whom actually opined that the fast pace and slick dialogue was 'not what UK TV is about, I'm afraid.' It must be awful to live one's life in fear, but anyway. Since the actors and the adapter were British, there was the urge to praise, but since this was an American format, the urge to get the boot in was just as strong. A few people mentioned with smugness that it's the first time the format-following has gone in this direction (thinking of everything from All in the Family to The Office) which overlooks the sad truth that where the Yanks buy formats and tinker with them, the Brits simply steal the idea and butcher it, to wit The Bill (Hill Street Blues), Casualty (ER), or This Life ('this ISN'T the British Friends', Amy Perkins told every interviewer, as if that made it so!). And in fact, a much earlier instance of the Brits buying in a format came when the GE College Bowl format was purchased by the BBC and turned into University Challenge (and you can find my take on yesterday's final, and the Gail Kimble controversy, here, where I ask if University Challenge is fixed). But back to Law and Order UK.

The finished product is actually a blend of L&O and the kind of pacing which Kudos, the British production company, first showed in Spooks (you can read about its most recent series here), and it works pretty well. But the punch of L&O comes from the legal dilemmas, not the pacy cop show; and those dilemmas are often related to police procedure: the ultimate question of whether the law can be enforced and whether, if it is, it constitutes justice. The interesting thing is that ITV, in its advertising, has made the usual mistake of equating the two halves of the show with its title, but the title is actually backwards, since it's the police who maintain order, while the lawyers play with the law. Order and Law doesn't really flow, though.

And if you keep that in mind, you'll soon see there is plenty of domestic material to make original screenplays from, but in fairness Chibnall chose his first show well, because the question of tenant-removal for urban upgrade should be a hot topic here in the wake of the new Eurostar and the upcoming Olympics. And the personal drama, in our present economic circumstances, seemed even more relevant. There was an over-reliance on using regional accents to set characters, but the dialogue never seemed forcing itself to maintain pace.

It probably works better if you don't know the original show, because if you do, you can see the original role models for the characters, remembering that one of the beauties of the US series is the way it has been able to keep going with cast turnover. The hardest job is Bradley Walsh's, trying to be Lenny Briscoe when Jerry Orbach is the toughest act to follow. George Dzundza's Max Greevy was the original older partner, and is probably closer to what Walsh ought to be; Orbach's brand of New York humour has been translated pretty well to Walsh's London, but I wonder if the character's backstory will be as convincing. Jamie Bamber is in the beefcake role as Chris Noth's Mike Logan, and can only hope a part in something like Mistresses (NOT the British Sex And The City, by the way!) lies at the end of this rainbow. He could aspire to Benjamin Bratt, who wound up sharing a motel room with Julia Roberts, but can we conceive of the British equivalent of that? The excellent Harriet Walter underplayed the role S Epatha Mackerson took over from Dann Florek, as if remembering that any woman playing a DI in charge has to channel her inner Helen Mirren.

But it's pretty obvious that the influence of Sam Waterston's Jack McCoy informs Ben Daniels' playing of James Steel with thin-burning moral indignation. Bill Patterson is excellent in the Stephen Hill role, getting a chance to play gruff, and hopefully he will continue with Hill's interpretation of the DA's political tightrope, as walked by the CPS, rather than veer off into Fred 'Mr President' Thompson or Dianne 'Where's Woody?' Wiest territory. Interestingly, in the current L&O stateside, McCoy is now the DA, though I haven't seen any of his episodes. Patterson and Hill are a good comparison as actors, and the role is perfect for Patterson. What we miss, in the British system, is the chance for bit parts for tired and world-weary judges who get to crack wise at the arraignments. In Britain, tired judges merely fall asleep.

The thankless role belongs to Freema Agyeman, who doesn't appear of have any of the many female assistant DAs who played second-fiddle to McCoy and Michael Moriarty's Ben Stone over the years (though in fairness the original, Richard Brooks, was male). Jill Hennessy was probably the best, though Carrie Lowell and Elizabeth Rohm both played off Waterston's stentorian character well. No one will ever look less like a DA than Angie Harmon, though, not even Agyeman, who, as Alesha Phillips (no relation to Trevor, probably) functions primarily to rush into the office with information she's gleaned from a file she should have read before the trial started, but decided to wait for better dramatic effect. Given that she made her name playing second-fiddle to Dr Who, this should be easy.

What we can also hope is that the show builds up a small roster of defense attorneys, which was one of the real strengths of L&O, everyone from Philip Bosco to Ron Silver to Elaine Stritch to Tovah Feldshuh to Lorraine Toussaint's Shambala Green (whose hairdo Agyeman is trying to reprise in the photo left) played against Moriarty and Waterston, and were fine doing it. Patrick Malahide (great name--it would do for the character he played better than for him!) was a perfect foil for Steel: they might have even gone to the same school, but Steel has certainly not followed the career path to success. I wonder too if they'll find an equivalent for Carolyn McCormack's Dr Olivet; I'd bring her over to London explaining she'd come to work at the Tavistock Clinic and wound up working with the CPS.

Kudos and Dick Wolf probably have, though it was worrying that the show lost viewers during its hour, especially if it was losing them to an investigation of Zoe Wanamaker's family tree, fascinating though I'm sure that is. I assume they are working on the idea of using the quality of the show's writing to build a solid base, before becoming more immediate and relevant if there is a second series. One of the joys of the American series is that they could draw on the stable of talented actors not based in LA, the ones doing commercials, theatre, and TV in the city. London, of course, should provide plenty of similar talent. Right not, I'd hope they get there.