Once you got past the awful title sequence and the usual, dull latter-day accompanying title song, this six-part contemporary political thriller made for entertaining watching.
Centring on lost-cause defence solicitor Helen McCrory's Jane Banfield's penchant for taking on tough cases for what might seem on the face of it unsympathetic defendants, she apparently quite happily lets the client and indeed the family of her clients stay over at her place.
The main story here concerns the unsafe conviction of a young father for the murder 14 years ago of a 15 year old girl, mainly down to a confession forced out of him by an over-keen female police detective played by Wunmi Mosaku, who becomes one of the focal points for Banfield's later campaign for the man's release. There's a connected sub-plot too involving a young Syrian mother who is staying at Banfield's pending immigration clearance and whose absent husband is suspected of terrorist sympathies.
The stories take many a twist and turn as you'd imagine over six episodes, involving a female mysterious American "fixer" with her own reasons for keeping the convicted "murderer" in jail, a senior British Whitehall mandarin in on the cover-up and in particular a new, young rising-star Labour politician who they seem to be helping to the top of the so-called political greasy pole, for their own ends. The fixer will stop at nothing to cover her tracks, including blackmail and attempted murder as she reports back to her ruthless U.S. Intelligence bosses and seems to keep one step of Banfield and her investigation until the latter's persistence pays off and the whole house of cards falls down in a dramatic conclusion outside the by-now new Labour leader's house.
While much of the story seemed to credit Banfield with detective instincts of which Sherlock Holmes would be proud, as well as the usual unbelievable coincidences and fantastic high-level connections, the action was fast-moving and carried forward by a fluid production acted out well by a mostly quality cast with Michael Gambon in particularly fine form as the oily, senior British link in the American chain of deception although quite what comedian John Bishop was doing as Banfield's "bit-of-rough" current boyfriend, I'm not quite sure but it didn't have much to do with acting skills.
It didn't look like there were markers laid down for future series featuring the Banfield character which would be a shame as her character is a strong one and one can easily imagine her returning a la "Prime Suspect's" Helen Mirren or "Happy Valley's" Sarah Lancashire, but be that as it may, this was superior small-screen drama well worth viewing.
