Is there any comfort to be had in knowing that police incompetence is not a new phenomenon? Not really, no. But it might be all you can find to cling on to during this harrowing, heartbreaking four-part drama. I Fought the Law is based on the true story of Ann Ming, the murder of her 22-year-old daughter Julie in 1989 and her 30-year campaign to change the double jeopardy law so Julie’s acquitted killer could be tried again for the crime.
I Fought the Law has two great strengths. First, the awareness that although the overturning of a law that had existed since Magna Carta is technically the most astonishing part of Ming’s tale, it is not the most televisual. That, for better or worse, will always be the body blows she withstood, from finding her daughter’s body three months after she went missing to the two horrendous trials she sat through and years of injustice. These would have felled anyone less extraordinary (and indeed threatened to fell her husband and their marriage, although both made it through in battered but unbowed form). The drama wisely confines the legal machinations to the final episode and concentrates three-quarters of its time on limning the lives of the Ming family before and after Julie’s murder.
