An excellent series - exaggerated drama, certainly, but that's entertainment
We've had, and likely always will have, lots of legal dramas, from serious and dark to outright comedy. There's lot of dramatic gold to mine in this genre. In the US - Boston Legal, LA Law, Ally McBeal, Perry Mason and many more - in the UK - Kavanagh QC, Judge John Deed, Justice, Rumpole of the Bailey, The Main Chance (that was the 1960s), Garrows Law (historical) and lots of others. It's a well worn genre with plenty of scope for human interest, convoluted and clever story telling, contemporary themes, triumph of honesty over adversity, love and darkness. Now, I'm not a lawyer, and as to the accuracy of the portrayals of the protagonists, both legal and criminal, in "Silk" I'm not one to judge. For instance, I am a doctor, and had to stop watching "House" as the episodes became ever more bizarre and a travesty of medical life and practice. I couldn't take the drama seriously enough to continue to follow the series.. However, I'd rate "Silk" pretty highly - for its high production values and truly excellent acting, along with stories of contemporary interest ( many seeming to arise from factual occurrences), with underlying themes from episode to episode of the more personal dramas in the Shoe Lane practice with it's three main protagonists - , Billy, the Machiavellian clerk who has accumulated to himself much power through his misuse of his position of trust and his self-appointed role as a sort of Godfather of the practice; Martha - the out of place northerner and female to boot, a feisty, intelligent, articulate and scrupulously honest rising legal star; her colleague Clive - superficially charming but a rather devious, emotionally unreliable and inadequate personally, but who comes over as a surprisingly sympathetic character and is actually a very good and humane barrister. Their interactions with a few less prominent other members of the firm, and with a succession of legal apprentices, makes up the rest of each week's stories. In the genre of legal dramas I'd rate "Silk" very highly indeed - it's good television, entertaining, exciting at times, humorous at others and sometimes challenging and thought provoking. What more could anyone wish for sitting in front of their TV screen for an hour? I've been watching them again recently on Netflix, and without the intrusive adverts and with its improved picture quality, the series is even better than I remember when it was first broadcast.score 9/10
j-monro 22 May 2016
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3474518/14384
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