Silk

The daily routine of a barristers’ chambers in London in a series that prides itself on being a realistic (according to experts, the only fundamental hiccup is the low age of the candidate for “silk") depiction of the world of law, full of behind-the-scenes intrigues, legal procedures and loop-holes, briefs so thick they could make it into the Guinness Book of Records delivered to be read overnight before the trial and even some cases before the court. But what stops it from being completely convincing are the characters. Not that the chambers staff are uninteresting, but (the first season of) the series is blindly focused only on Martha who, despite being pleasant (and Maxine’s performance) is a little annoying due to her desperate goodness. If she were given the same space as the rest of the unremarkable characters (apart from Billy’s Machiavelli-ism), she would function as an excellent foil. However, this way, alone in the center of events, she is more a dead weight dragging the series down, while not sinking it totally. However, season two changes this radically; the unremarkable characters have been fired, leaving behind the “more mature", non-black and white characters and cases which now tend to be on a fuzzy knife-edge where the perspective and interpretation of the law is completely different to the higher, moral principle; and so nobody wins and everybody loses. In many respects, season three is the best in terms of the development of cases and characters, but due to “holding up a mirror" through socially topical cases, this rather loses the excellent down-to-earthness of the previous seasons. P.S.: The creators take it for granted that you are well versed in the procedures, hierarchy, powers, jargon and division of work of the British legal system; but if you aren’t, I recommend you spend a short while with Wikipedia, otherwise you will easily get lost in all of the ins and outs. | S1: 4/5 | S2: 4/5 | S3: 4/5 | (29.05.2013)