Court is in session. The judge enters; the attendees rise. All eyes are on the defendant – but in ITVX’s new series The Twelve (imported from Australian TV channel Foxtel, and adapted from the Belgian series of the same name), the camera pans sideways and fixes on the jury instead. For in this show – directed by The Tourist’s Daniel Nettheim – it is the jurors that are the main focus, rather than the case itself. Oh, and Sam Neill, as one of the lawyers.
As they should, our protagonists comprise people of all ages, genders and races – but they’re all united, it seems, in having perfectly awful private lives.
Georgina (Brooke Satchwell) is living with an abusive partner who locks her in the bathroom for lying to her; Corrie (Pallavi Sharda) is a wealthy heiress living in a massive, airless house belonging to her late parents; student Jarrad (Ngali Shaw) is struggling to balance jury duty with his studies.
As the show progresses, their lives clash in predictable ways. Sinister white van man Garry (Brendan Cowell) starts stalking Corrie, possibly to unseat her in her role as the lead juror; Georgina attempts to evade jury duty entirely at the behest of her husband; the older men talk down to the women constantly.
In fact, so much time is given to the minutiae of these people’s lives, the business deals going wrong, the budding romances, the relationships under strain (only some of which, like Georgina’s, are interesting) that The Twelve often forgets to focus its attention on the actual murder case, which could be compelling if given enough airtime.
The case at the heart of the story concerns photographer Kate, played by an on-form Kate Mulvany (whom Neill’s lawyer character is defending), who manages to convey abject terror with the mere twitch of an eyelid.
She is in the dock for the suspected murder of her 14-year-old niece Claire, who went missing a few years ago and whose body was never found. In the absence of a body, Kate was found in possession of inappropriate images of Claire and arrested anyway.
Kate’s been waiting years for this trial, but it’s evident from the start that the odds are against her. In the dock, prosecution lawyer Lucy Bloom (Marta Dusseldorp) paints an image of Claire as an innocent child, taken advantage of by her sinister older relative. But as we all know, things are rarely that simple – and as we get to know Claire’s devastated mother and shifty father, the bigger mystery begins to unfold.
It’s fascinating stuff, in theory, but never gets enough time to breathe. This is because the mystery itself (complete with flashbacks) is constantly vying for attention with the rather less compelling private lives of its jurors – and given how many of them there are, the result is an overcrowded show that sags under the weight of its concept. Sadly, this is underlined by Neill’s appearances too: just by being there he raises the quality; whenever he’s not on screen, it flags slightly as a result.
You can’t blame the show’s makers for wanting to spice up the court drama formula a little: we get so many that it can be hard to make them stand out, and this is a worthy attempt.
But The Twelve ultimately fails to stick the landing. Crime lovers will find plenty to intrigue them; for the casual viewer, the jury’s very much out.
