The Jury: Murder Trial (Channel 4) | channel4.com
Things You Should Have Done (BBC Three) | iPlayer
The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin (Apple TV+)
Secret World of Sound With David Attenborough (Sky Nature)
You find me in a state of low-level shock. I can’t remember the last time I got so demoralised watching television. I’m talking about Channel 4’s The Jury: Murder Trial, a four-part reality TV social experiment that aired over the week. A real-life anonymised trial restaged in a former Chelmsford courthouse, with verdicts delivered by two juries of real people. Experts provide insights, while actors play barristers, the accused and witnesses. The juries, who sit in closed-off court boxes, are aware they’re being filmed, but not that there’s an alternative jury. For the first time, there’s access to jury debates. It’s fascinating television but, as I say, disheartening. You may find yourself Googling “moving to another country” as you watch it.
The experiment centres on whether the two juries will come to the same conclusion (the series cites research estimating that 25% of court cases have incorrect outcomes), and if these match the real-life verdict. The crime involves sculptor “John”, a man with no history of violence, who killed his wife, “Helen”, first by strangling her then smashing the sides of her head with an industrial hammer. Is he guilty of murder or manslaughter, pleading “loss of control” (meaning a significantly lighter sentence)?
Immediately, I’m bristling. A woman’s appalling death being repurposed as… what exactly? A new form of true crime entertainment? Then again, it could be grimly useful to see what happens in such cases. Expecting only grave court scenes, I’m also irritated by the underpowered witness dramatisations, which whiff of one those murder mystery weekends that get held in country houses and hotels. But it’s the jury discussions that make the soul shrivel.
Jurors are shown taking entrenched positions absurdly early and refusing to budge. Others can’t see past their own memories of “red mists” (thrown cups of tea; convoluted dramas involving cars), or their own irrelevant life experiences (one juror wants to hug weeping John because she has also been called fat).
While Helen was clearly a troubled, volatile individual with severe mental health issues, at times the victim-blaming (“she didn’t deserve to die but she was asking for it”) and turbo misogyny are straight out of the Salem witch trial handbook. Loud, dominant characters (self-styled puppet masters) are jubilant about swaying others. One even seems to punch the air.
Mindful of spoilers, I’ll leave it there. Obviously, it doesn’t do to overreact. The Jury: Murder Trial is an experiment staged for TV, and you can’t help but suspect that some of the bigger jury characters are mugging for the cameras. Even so, how unfit for purpose the show makes the UK judicial system look; how random, how vulnerable. This is riveting but worrying, revelatory television: The Traitors with real-world consequences.
To perk yourselves up, there’s the new six-part BBC Three comedy, Things You Should Have Done, created by and starring Lucia Keskin. Keskin (last seen as Kelly in Big Boys) plays Chi, a gen Z “stay-at-home daughter” who’s gormless to a degree that appears to require urgent medical intervention. When her parents die, she’s told she can inherit their Ramsgate home only if she completes a list of conditions (learn to drive, read a book, etc). Meanwhile, her “diagnosed uptight” aunt (Selin Hizli from Am I Being Unreasonable?), called Karen (natch), circles like an exasperated suburban vulture, itching to get her hands on the house.
Keskin is known for her online skits and impressions, and some (Nigella, Claudia Winkleman) are sprinkled here, along with fantasy interludes (Chi as a sperm). The main pulse is Chi’s spacey dysfunction: she reacts to her parents’ deaths like she’s mislaid a favourite scrunchie. Elsewhere, she becomes over-involved with everyone from driving instructors to care home residents.
There’s more than a dash of Philomena Cunk in Chi, and the uber-dense interplay with her cousin (Jamie Bisping) echoes Daisy May Cooper’s This Country. Attempts to add slivers of darkness and pathos (grief, infertility) don’t always land. However, there’s impish toying with taste boundaries (child kidnap, ethical masturbation) and epic playfulness (I’m particularly fond of Chi’s parents as rubbish, half-hearted ghosts). With some tightening of the bolts, a deft comedy chronicler of the humdrum and inappropriate looks likely to emerge.
Another new comedy: Apple TV’s period six-parter The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin. Created by Claire Downes, Ian Jarvis and Stuart Lane, it stars Noel Fielding as the 18th-century highwayman.
Those who’ve become accustomed to Fielding commiserating over flat sponges in his floury goth-in-residence role on The Great British Bake Off will have to readjust to his left-field comedy persona. His Turpin is a “new-school” highwayman (“There’s going to be less violence on my watch – more charm, maybe even some panache!”); a peace-loving vegan with a penchant for flouncy cloaks and supping peppermint tea in inns.
He and his hopeless gang (Marc Wootton, Ellie White and Duayne Boachie) must evade hanging, incarceration, nobility, warlocks, witchcraft and supernatural coaches. There’s also a corrupt lawman (Hugh Bonneville), whose menacing encounters with Turpin keep being undermined by his childcare issues (“Dad, I found a dead moth”).
There’s a sprawling cast list: Tamsin Greig, David Threlfall, Asim Chaudhry, Jessica Hynes, Paul Kaye and others. Connor Swindells reprises his Sex Education comedy chops as a dandified arch rival who could be the Hansel to Turpin’s Zoolander. At times, it all feels like a slightly stoned, heavily costumed 1990s/00s panto (and one with a sizeable debt to Blackadder and Taika Waititi’s recent pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death) – but it’s nicely droll and silly, with a wry, surrealist kick.
Over on Sky Nature there’s the new three-part docuseries Secret World of Sound With David Attenborough. Appearing early in the opener in a wood full of bluebells, the presenter looks into how noises and vibrations enable hunters and also protect the hunted.
Along the way, lions roar across the African Savanna (“One of the great acoustic displays of power in nature”), elephants sense rainstorms, and bees use buzzing to pollinate flowers. It doesn’t really need the flashy graphics showing soundwaves (they look a bit gimmicky), but no matter. Attenborough, with those signature gravelly, mellow tones, is a wily ringmaster of the natural world who knows exactly how to thrill the crowds.
Star ratings (out of five)
The Jury: Murder Trial ★★★★
Things You Should Have Done ★★★
The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin ★★★
Secret World of Sound With David Attenborough ★★★★
What else I’m watching
Shōgun
(Disney+)
Starring Hiroyuki Sanada, this 10-part drama is based on James Clavell’s 1975 cult novel about Japanese feudal warfare in the 1600s. Epic and thunderous (gunning to be an east Asian Game of Thrones?) – but avoid if you’re squeamish about violence.
Formula 1: Drive to Survive
(Netflix)
The sixth series of the thrilling, cut-throat Formula One docuseries in which the drama is all on the track – except of course when it’s behind the scenes.
Spud
(BBC Three)
A treat for fans of Derry Girls’ Siobhán McSweeney (Sister Michael), who writes and stars in this nimble comedy short about an average woman who needs to be seen.
