In courtroom dramas, all eyes are usually on the lawyers – the silver-tongued pursuers or enemies of justice, navigating a complex and flawed system. Early in Foxtel’s 10-part series The Twelve, Sam Neill’s snooty member of the bar, Brett Colby, is speaking to his client Kate (Kate Mulvany), a photographer who has been charged with the murder of a teenage girl. Her appearance will be crucial during the trial, because, Colby says, leaning forward: “The jury is everything.” The show’s title then appears, to drive this point home.
But it seems The Twelve’s screenwriters (Sarah Walker, Brad Winters, Anchuli Felicia King, Leah Purcell, Tommy Murphy and Greg Waters, adapting a 2019 Belgium series of the same name) didn’t get the memo, because the show opens not with the jurors but visions of the suspect, Kate, and the victim. Only after that we are introduced to one juror-to-be, Georgina (Brooke Satchwell), and even then, her opening scene isn’t hers entirely. Director Daniel Nettheim (who directed the first three episodes of Stan’s explosively good series The Tourist) crosscuts between Georgina on her way to a jury selection process, and Kate being transferred from jail to the courthouse.
As Georgina drives, we hear a radio journalist report on the “first day of a murder trial that not everybody agrees is a murder”. The body of 14-year-old Claire (Coco Jack Gillies) has not been found, and the prosecuting attorney, Lucy Bloom (Marta Dusseldorp), claims “the only reasonable explanation” is that Claire was dumped in Sydney harbour. It’s a risky move for the writers, with every courtroom moment potentially undercut by cynical viewers entertaining the possibility that the murder victim might not be dead at all.
The titular dozen include the wealthy but troubled Corrie (Pallavi Sharda), Indigenous university student Jarrod (Ngali Shaw), recent migrant Farrad (Hazem Shammas) and scruffy gambler Garry (Brendan Cowell). Garry is probably the most interesting character – Cowell, red-cheeked and bedraggled here, is always very good at looking as if he’s recovering from a hangover. We don’t know exactly what this bleary-eyed bloke is capable of, though it doesn’t take long to ascertain that some dramatic friction will be extrapolated from his presence.
Something is off about the relationship between Georgina and her husband, Jamie (Hamish Michael), and Corrie is obviously hiding some secrets, maybe tied to her family and affluence. The first two episodes (which form the extent of this review) don’t give a lot away; nor does the show establish a particularly strong foundation for its characters. The jurors are part of the focus, but so are all the people in their lives, particularly their romantic and business partners. The Twelve is best when it sticks to the central case, but it is only tepidly interesting when venturing elsewhere.
Despite Colby’s early proclamation, not everything is about the jury. Compare The Twelve’s sprawling focus with a production in which the jury really is everything: Sidney Lumet’s 1957 classic 12 Angry Men, a great demonstration of the kind of drama that can be wrought on the rare occasion when writers truly focus on jurors. Lumet’s film is based almost entirely in a single location: a jury room, where a principled contrarian (Henry Fonda) slowly changes the minds of 11 other jurors, who are initially convinced of a young man’s guilt.
Inspiration can be drawn from Lumet’s clever fusion of character and circumstance; the jurors’ personalities are developed through conversation at the same time details of the case are divulged. Despite how difficult this is to pull off, it feels effortless in the hands of Lumet – whereas The Twelve feels laboured, like it’s working very hard to hold your attention.
And despite being in monochrome, 12 Angry Men feels tense and hot, set during a day of scorching temperature. This is visually illustrated in the usual ways – shots of fans and sweat-splotched clothes – but it also speaks to the bravado of the writing and its intense character-driven conflicts. The Twelve, on the other hand, feels bright, airy and aesthetically unexceptional. The jurors are so generously bathed in light streaming in from above, I felt the judge could have reminded them to slip, slop, slap. It doesn’t exactly scream “atmospheric intensity”.
There was a point, well into the second episode, when I felt the case was building momentum and the juices really starting to flow. Fingers crossed there’s (a lot) more of that.
The Twelve starts on Foxtel on Tuesday 21 June, 8.30pm AEST and will be available to stream on demand afterwards.
