Despite its daftness, I was fond of the first series of Showtrial, which took the death of a working-class student at a posh university and used it to explore themes of privilege and justice in the British legal system. Viewers liked it, too: it was brash, popular Sunday night fare, an airport novel of a TV series that pirouetted around credibility yet dragged you in with its relentless twists. It returns for a second, starrier season with a similarly over-the-top sensibility – and yet again I have been sucked in, despite the nagging presence of a firmly raised eyebrow during large sections of each of its five episodes.
This time, it has dipped into its grab-bag of headlines and come up with a story about the tactics of climate activism, offensive police WhatsApp group chats and online conspiracy theories. It may leave the impression that it is spinning too many plates, but the plot is captivating and once again touches on the class tensions within British society. Moving from Bristol to Brighton, it examines the legal process behind a newsworthy murder charge, this time thrown at a serving police officer, dragging the audience into yet another us-and-them, upstairs-downstairs scenario.
Marcus Calderwood (Barney Fishwick) is the wealthy founder of the activist group Stop Climate Genocide, which has made many enemies with its road-blocking protests. Calderwood is knocked off his bicycle and left to die in a ditch; as he breathes his last, he manages to issue a dying statement to a paramedic, naming a police officer as the man who deliberately ran him off the road. Michael Socha plays a blinder as PC Justin Mitchell, the man known initially as Officer X, who denies playing any part in Calderwood’s death, but he sure has done a lot of things that suggest he has something to hide. Mitchell is arrogant, charismatic and, crucially, an insider who understands the system, having experienced it on the frontline. He runs rings around the superior officers who question him and is surprisingly chipper, considering the enormous amount of circumstantial evidence pointing a finger in his direction.
But the important detail here is that it is all circumstantial evidence, at least in the early stages of the investigation. Unlike straight police procedurals or legal dramas, Showtrial likes to dig into the complex details of the case. Mitchell requests the services of the defence solicitor Sam Malik (Adeel Akhtar, turning up his cerebral Eeyore routine to impeccable effect), who is known for getting unpalatable clients off on seemingly unbeatable charges. Mitchell, who is carried by a strong sense of right and wrong even though he feels that the system is not fit for purpose, recognises that he needs to be defended by “the most annoyingly persistent little twat you’ll ever meet”. The question of due process is examined repeatedly, as Malik argues that everyone, even the most odious of criminals, is entitled to a defence. He upholds the values of “reason, logic and basic morality”, he tells his son, who in return suggests that, in the age of outrage, his values are relics of a bygone era.
The performances are strong – often stronger than the script. The need for each character to come with a truckload of personal trauma, in addition to their professional woes, compounds the sense that it could do with trimming the fat. Malik is an insomniac with serious mental health issues, while his counterpart at the Crown Prosecution Service, Leila Hassoun-Kenny (Nathalie Armin), has a demanding half-sister and a mother who is a semi-famous academic and French Marxist philosopher. Who, among us, cannot relate to that? There are a few holes, too, in its ambitious patchwork of problems.
It can feel like having a series of opinion pieces quoted at you. It tends towards the broad, too: poshos believe in the climate crisis, salt-of-the-earth coppers are sexist boozehounds. (One climate activist calls the Guardian “fake allies”, so there goes the five-star review.) There is a convoluted, perhaps disingenuous, reason given for Mitchell’s animosity towards Stop Climate Genocide, which appears to hint at protesters blocking ambulances – although even the divisive Just Stop Oil has a “blue lights” policy, in theory allowing emergency vehicles through – but then it backs away and comes up with a more garbled story involving a driver’s lack of experience on a smaller road, which they wouldn’t have been driving on had they not been diverted away from the motorway by a protest. This is a butterfly effect too far.
Even so, there is plenty to enjoy about Showtrial. It is a frothy thriller that wrangles with big questions; it is tense and twisty; and Socha and Akhtar, in particular, make it a compelling watch.
• Showtrial airs on BBC One and is available on BBC iPlayer
