Get with the programme

Another New Year and another trumpeting to announce the reappearance on our television screens of that well-known, ever popular drama queen: Laura Norder. Yup '“ she's back; and she is getting more gritty and ugly than she was before. The other night there were numerous trailers for Laura '“ we've got murdered females (naked), murdered females (clothed), we've gone under her covers, between her covers, found out that she is not all that she seems to be, that she has thrown away the rule book and so on. Laura is going to be very busy in the cold months of winter.

Is there such a fascination with Ms Norder in all her many forms? On the one hand it is stiffs all over the place, choking on dry martinis in the library while the little Belgian or the little old lady solve in genteel fashion the most gruesome and ungrieved for murders; then we have DI Barnaby policing Midsomer Murder-land near single-handed, where the credentials seem to require only an ability to drive about in saloon cars and extract a confession by suggesting that the murderer did it, whereupon '“ they confess! Then there is Lewis, brooding in Oxford without Morse; there is Wallender doing it the Nordic way, and Rebus feeling the chill off the Forth up in Edinburgh.

Perhaps the real message in all of this is if you don't want to get murdered then live somewhere ordinary that a film crew would have no interest in, like, say, Watford. Otherwise, as soon as the location gets picturesque or '“ horror '“ atmospheric, you can bet your now much shorter life than it was before that some detective with dreadful personal problems is on your beat and the death rate has shot up '“ literally.

Searching for excitement

What does Laura do for the legal profession? The problem is that everybody who is not intimately involved with the law thinks it is a daily diet of tremendous excitement and adrenalin. In every court there is a brilliant cross-examination going on where the chief prosecution witness is about to crack and confess that they 'did it' after all; or there is a tremendously bad tempered judge, or a bent solicitor at the police station handing out fags and alibis to the villain.

The reality is of course that it is all really pretty dull most of the time. Stick your head into court one and the judge is probably dealing with an unfeasibly long list of plea and case management hearings, where the only forensic fireworks being thrown are to do with how long the defence need to listen to the interview tape. In court two, there may be a sentence that involves careful consideration of a pre-sentence report and then a drug treatment and testing order is passed. In court three, the officer in the case is reading out the interview, and in court four somebody is asking for an adjournment. We have all had the feeling of noticing an eager party of school students being ushered into the public gallery full of anticipation of flying horsehair and a sobbing confession, to sense '“ half an hour later '“ them all troop out again disappointedly, in search of something more exciting '“ like queuing for a bus.

So the public must think that we are all either forensic geniuses with a rapier wit or dodgy lie-mongerers, and that judges are just crabby and stupid like army generals. Whenever I get asked the 'how do you defend someone you know is guilty' question people are still amazed when I explain the real, ethical position. Thanks to Laura, the public thinks we do not have any ethics at all, except a love of cash and the devil called mischief.

It's personal

I suppose the same goes for hospitals: watch any hospital drama and it seems that the staff of A&E are more pre-occupied with sorting out their personal problems than treating the patients. If this were really the case, then it would be pretty easy for the government to get waiting lists down: just send out an edict that says that there are to be no inter-personal crises while on duty. All that getting together, getting excited, getting confused, getting angry and getting rid of each other should all go on away from the hospital. In the same way, all those messy personal situations that arise in Judge John Deed could be removed by simply following the basic rules on the perception of bias and the right to a fair trial. Oh, what a dull lot we all are in real life, as I frequently say to my clients. It is only at the verdict stage that there really is genuine, unmatchable tension.

So here is a New Year resolution for the television writers and producers: let's have a really dull crime programme where nothing much happens for ages, where lawyers do their jobs conscientiously, properly and unsensationally, and then go home to do some more work in the evenings. The quiet routine of the criminal justice system might actually inspire a bit of public confidence in the process and a bit of respect for the jolly old lawyers and judges, ushers, clerks and stenographers, witness support staff and the cheery souls who dish out coffee to the innocent and the guilty, prosecutors and defenders alike. Then we might all get a bit of peace at next year's Christmas parties.

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