I've spent most of the day watching the Law & Order UK marathon that BBC America was showing. I missed the first broadcasts of this on BBCA, so this was my first chance to see Jamie Bamber and Freema Agyeman in this show (and one other actor I know -- the DA-equivalent character is played by the actor who played Professor Bracewell in Doctor Who this past season). Some of the scripts were adaptations of episodes I've seen, though most were taken from the first few seasons that never get rerun anymore. (Although I could tell when episodes were adapted from later seasons, because some of the lead detective's lines were distinctly Lenny Briscoe-ish.)
Of course the episodes are all adapted to British law and terminology, and though I could pick up on a few things (like how a defense attorney is called a "brief" and there's a charge called "GBH" for grievous bodily harm), I still found myself wishing for some annotations. What's a Trojan unit? What does M.I.U. stand for? Why is Freema the only one exempt from wearing a wig in court? (It can't be gender, since there was a female defense attorney -- err, brief -- wearing a wig in one episode.) And so on.
There were a lot of courtroom scenes that diverged from proper US courtroom procedure, like barristers giving argument during examination or not objecting to things that would warrant objection, and I'm wondering how much of that was a difference between the court systems' rules and how much was just the sloppiness toward courtroom procedure that's typical of L&O in the states. Also, do they have double jeopardy rules in England? There was an episode where a suspect was acquitted of a crime and it was subsequently discovered that her act was part of a larger conspiracy, and she was re-charged with that crime among others. In the States, you can't try someone more than once for the same specific criminal act.
One clear difference from the US version is the lack of guns. In a case where the original episode had a murder victim's distraught mother shoot the suspect outside the courthouse, here she stabbed him. And it was refreshing to hear the prosecutors talking about culprits going to prison and getting a chance at rehabilitation, rather than talking about sentencing people to death. Moreover, there seemed to be a preference toward selecting episodes where the crime was not a homicide or where someone intending a less violent act inadvertently killed someone. The whole thing just seemed less violent overall. I liked that.
What struck me was how many of the L&O episodes selected for adaptation by Chris Chibnall were ones where the DAs/barristers lost the case. Yeah, there were some where they lost one prosecution and then found a way to win by prosecuting a different, associated crime, but there were at least a couple where they out-and-out lost, even though the defendants were actually guilty. At one point I found myself thinking, "Man, these guys aren't very good at their jobs."
But then, given Chibnall's prior work on Torchwood, it's evident he doesn't go in for happy endings a whole lot.
Of course the episodes are all adapted to British law and terminology, and though I could pick up on a few things (like how a defense attorney is called a "brief" and there's a charge called "GBH" for grievous bodily harm), I still found myself wishing for some annotations. What's a Trojan unit? What does M.I.U. stand for? Why is Freema the only one exempt from wearing a wig in court? (It can't be gender, since there was a female defense attorney -- err, brief -- wearing a wig in one episode.) And so on.
There were a lot of courtroom scenes that diverged from proper US courtroom procedure, like barristers giving argument during examination or not objecting to things that would warrant objection, and I'm wondering how much of that was a difference between the court systems' rules and how much was just the sloppiness toward courtroom procedure that's typical of L&O in the states. Also, do they have double jeopardy rules in England? There was an episode where a suspect was acquitted of a crime and it was subsequently discovered that her act was part of a larger conspiracy, and she was re-charged with that crime among others. In the States, you can't try someone more than once for the same specific criminal act.
One clear difference from the US version is the lack of guns. In a case where the original episode had a murder victim's distraught mother shoot the suspect outside the courthouse, here she stabbed him. And it was refreshing to hear the prosecutors talking about culprits going to prison and getting a chance at rehabilitation, rather than talking about sentencing people to death. Moreover, there seemed to be a preference toward selecting episodes where the crime was not a homicide or where someone intending a less violent act inadvertently killed someone. The whole thing just seemed less violent overall. I liked that.
What struck me was how many of the L&O episodes selected for adaptation by Chris Chibnall were ones where the DAs/barristers lost the case. Yeah, there were some where they lost one prosecution and then found a way to win by prosecuting a different, associated crime, but there were at least a couple where they out-and-out lost, even though the defendants were actually guilty. At one point I found myself thinking, "Man, these guys aren't very good at their jobs."
But then, given Chibnall's prior work on Torchwood, it's evident he doesn't go in for happy endings a whole lot.
