Lawyer dramas are more like real life documentaries these days
There are so few barristers in 'Silk' it makes the programme look like the post-Grayling apocalypse, says Felix
Confusingly "Silk" came out the same week as the new Silks came out in the list. Tuning in a week later I was intrigued to see whether the television representation would have cheered or deflated those who can now rustle their way around the courtrooms of the land and ride in a big black car to Westminster on the big day of the big wig and the amusing socks and shoes and gloves and everything else that goes with it.
Well - hmm, a supper of chips and whisky at the desk does not appeal, and I do wonder how much longer Martha Costello is going to manage to look that good on it. For my part, life on the road as a hard-working advocate [to adapt one of Dave's phrases that strangely enough seem to apply benignly to everybody else paying taxes in this country but not to hardworking barristers] is that too many Burger Kings, Gingsters' pasties and over-priced beige coffee soon wrecks the complexion and makes you feel rather seedy. Also always being stuck with the same opponent, even one as good looking as Rupert Penry-Jones, may begin to get you down after a while. Rather like Kavanagh QC, there are not many barristers out there. Perhaps in that way the programme is prescient, and is actually taking place post the Grayling Apocalypse when in fact there are only about four or five barristers left in the world.
But three cheers for Maxine Peake - and also three cheers that one of the dreadful old abuses of life at the Bar is being explored - that is sexual blackmail. Now while I have never had a supper of whisky n' chips, and I have had more than two opponents in my time, we do know that there were, though not for me, things that hopefully can be called "The Bad Old Days", when just that sort of thing went on. So wigs off to the show for bringing all of that to the fore.
Is it just getting old, or is it the case that in fact our profession is a lot nicer and more honourable than it ever used to be? Are judges on the whole getting nicer as well as younger? They don't seem to be in such permanently filthy moods any more. Nobody seems to go puce, or snap pencils or routinely storm off the Bench. It feels like reminiscing about muddy football pitches and having to paint the penalty spot in. So maybe again this is all - like only having two opponents - the end of the world - rather like the passing of Bob Crowe, who has gone from what appeared to Public Enemy No 1 to good old Bob, man of principle and the people and remembered with a chuckle and a misty eye by all of those papers and people who loathed him last Monday.
Are we, too, as a profession in the twilight zone when everyone is very nice to each other because it is all soon to be over now? Well at least we can watch it on television and remember... thanks Martha, for keeping the dream alive.
Felix is the pen name of a barrister practising in London
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