Garrow's Law

A Twenty Twenty / Shed Media Scotland production through BBC Scotland, the four-part factual drama is inspired by the life of pioneering barrister William Garrow (Buchan). RTS award-winning Garrow’s Law revisits the Old Bailey of Georgian London and is set against a backdrop of corruption and social injustice, based on real legal cases from the late-18th century.

In an age where the defence counsel acted in the minority of cases, the young William Garrow championed the underdog and pioneered the rigorous cross-examination of prosecution witnesses that paved the way for our modern legal system today.

Dominic Barlow, executive producer, Twenty Twenty / Shed Media Scotland, says: “We are delighted to be bringing Garrow’s Law back to BBC One. This series will not only see Garrow fighting legal and political injustice in the Old Bailey but also injustice in his personal life that could end his career at the Bar.”

Mark Bell, Commissioning Editor, Arts, adds: “Tony Marchant and the team at Twenty Twenty did a great job in bringing William Garrow from the shadows of British legal history to a broad audience on BBC One. Round Two of his trials and tribulations will see him continue to fight for love and justice through more shocking and amazing cases of the time.”

Co-created by Tony Marchant (The Knight’s Tale, Mark Of Cain, Crime & Punishment), Garrow’s Law, series two is produced by Nick Pitt(Robin Hood, Silent Witness) and directed by Ashley Pearce (Poirot, The Commander). Executive producers are Dominic Barlow and Tim Carter for Twenty Twenty / Shed, Gaynor Holmes for BBC Scotland Drama and Mark Bell, Commissioning Editor, BBC Arts & Knowledge.

Garrow’s Law series two was commissioned Jay Hunt, Controller, BBC One, and Mark Bell, Commissioning Editor, Arts.

The second series starts shooting at the end of June until mid-August at BBC Scotland‘s Dumbarton studios. It will broadcast later in 2010.

Garrow’s Law continues in the footsteps of distinctive programming made recently through BBC Scotland including Single Father (BBC One), The Deep (BBC One), Lip Service (BBC Three), One Night In Emergency (BBC One Scotland), River City (BBC One Scotland), Waterloo Road (BBC One) and Wallander (BBC One).

Garrow (Andrew Buchan) continues to defend the victims of rough justice

Sir Arthur Hill congratulates William Garrow on his successful defence of a prostitute accused of murdering a client, as the 18th-century legal drama series based on real cases concludes. Sir Arthur also takes great delight in revealing that Lady Sarah is pregnant with his child.

Garrow tries to persuade Lady Sarah to leave Sir Arthur but she tells him that they have no future together.

Meanwhile, a desperate Mary Hamer visits John Southouse’s office, begging him to instruct Garrow to defend her husband, Joseph, who has been languishing in Newgate Prison, without charge, for many months on suspicion of sedition and plotting an armed uprising against the King. Southouse is sympathetic but tells her that he is unable to help as his association with Garrow is over.

Later, Garrow finds Southouse at the coffee house and offers his old mentor the hand of friendship. Southouse’s reluctance is set aside after Mary’s arrest at a meeting of The London Corresponding Society along with her supporter, Charles Lynam. Garrow has read about Joseph in newspaper reports and is keen to take on the case. Southouse agrees to assist and sets about securing the release of Mary and Charles so that they can help prepare the defence.

Elsewhere, the Secretary Of State, Viscount Melville, and Sir Arthur Hill meet with fellow MPs. Alarmed by the American and French revolutions, the politicians agree to press charges against Joseph. Sir John Scott, the Attorney General, is instructed to prosecute, assisted by Silvester.

When Sir John’s prosecution before Judge Buller at the Old Bailey proves weak, Melville and his colleagues devise a plan. Sir John and Silvester offer Garrow and Southouse a deal – if Joseph pleads guilty, meaning certain death for him and fellow members of the Society, the lives of a further 800 men suspected of plotting against the King will be spared. To make matters worse, Melville’s men find a receipt for a hundred muskets in Joseph’s house.

Lady Sarah forces Sir Arthur to tell her about the plot against Joseph and she then reveals to Garrow that Lynam is a government spy.

Melville then tries to influence Garrow by offering him the job of King’s Counsel. Garrow is tempted but his conscience prompts him to refuse. After promising to give his own version of the trial to journalist Thomas Rawlings, Garrow asks him to find the names of the 800 men on the government’s list as he prepares to defend Joseph.

Sir Arthur Hill is played by Rupert Graves, William Garrow by Andrew Buchan, Lady Sarah Hill by Lyndsey Marshal, John Southouse by Alun Armstrong, Silvester by Aidan McArdle and Judge Buller by Michael Culkin.

Sunday 15 November
9.00-10.00pm BBC ONE

Lady Sarah Hill (Lyndsey Marshal)

confronts William Garrow (Andrew Buchan)

After more derision from Silvester, Garrow is spurred on to defend Edgar Cole, who is accused of raping a servant, as the legal drama co-created by Tony Marchant continues.

Garrow controversially wins and Cole is acquitted, much to the disappointment of Lady Sarah, who believes that Garrow only agreed to defend Cole to show off his legal skills. After the trial, Lady Sarah confronts Garrow but Silvester interrupts and senses the intimacy between them. His insinuation offends Garrow and he challenges Silvester to a duel to defend Lady Sarah’s honour.

Southouse is furious with Garrow for challenging Silvester but agrees to be Garrow’s second. They meet Silvester and his second, George Hervey, at dawn for the showdown. Garrow wins the right to shoot first but decides to shoot into the ground. Southouse is relieved but Silvester insists on taking his turn to teach Garrow a lesson, shooting him in the arm.

Sir Arthur is keen to learn the result of the duel and passes on the news that Garrow has been shot to Lady Sarah. Her reaction causes him to question her fidelity. Lady Sarah visits Garrow and admits her feelings. They kiss for the first time but, later, she tells him she must remain true to her husband.

Garrow’s injury is not serious and he is soon back in court and up against his old nemesis, thief-taker Edward Forrester. Garrow is defending Tom and Phebe, who are accused of stealing from a shop owned by Katharine Stanton, on the orders of Forrester. Katherine’s grandson, Dan, gave chase to the thieves but ran into Forrester, who beat Dan up. Dan dies and Tom and Phebe are accused of killing him.

Garrow is eager to cross-examine Forrester again but, as Southouse points out, recent distractions have left him ill-prepared. Forrester manages to humiliate him again. At dinner, Garrow subtly suggests to Judge Varley that some thief-takers like Forrester commit perjury in order to make more money for securing convictions.

Later, Forrester, is arrested for perjury. Tom and Phebe are sentenced to transportation and Forrester is sentenced to two hours in the stocks.

Meanwhile, Southouse guesses the reason for the duel and is angry and disappointed with Garrow. They argue and Southouse suggests they end their association. Stubbornly, Garrow agrees.

The cast includes Andrew Buchan as William Garrow, Lyndsey Marshal as Lady Sarah Hill, Aidan McArdle as Silvester, Alun Armstrong as Southouse, Rupert Graves as Sir Arthur Hill and Steven Waddington as Forrester.

Garrow (Andrew Buchan) and his associate, Southouse

(Alun Armstrong), investigate crimes in Georgian London

William Garrow is now a celebrated barrister at the late 18th century Old Bailey, as the legal drama co-created by Tony Marchant and starring Andrew Buchan, Alun Armstrong and Lyndsey Marshal continues.

In his next case, he successfully defends a coachman accused by his master, the aristocratic, pompous Crespigny, of stealing a harness.

Across London, a man is knifing young ladies and the perpetrator is dubbed the “Monster” by the press and newspaper proprietor, John Julius, who takes a particular interest in the well-being of the attractive young ladies who’ve been attacked.

After the latest attack on Ann Porter, a young man, Renwick Williams, is accused and is arrested and sent to Newgate Prison. After a visit from Renwick’s mother, Agnes Williams, and believing Renwick is innocent, Southouse encourages Garrow to defend him. Garrow soon learns that his defence of the Monster does not prove popular and his celebrity wanes.

Garrow and Southouse interview Renwick in Newgate and Garrow describes him as a lecherous libertine. The key to the defence is discovered by Southouse and a strange statute from 1721 which protects the damage of clothes by disgruntled weavers angry at the importation of cloth from abroad. The punishment for this crime is hanging.

Garrow makes quick work of proving Angerstein to be a lecher and when he cross-examines Ann, he proves that the reason she accused Renwick of the attack was because he had previously attempted to seduce her. She rebuffed Renwick’s advances, branding him a “shop-man”.

Despite Garrow’s excellent defence, the jury finds Renwick guilty and it’s up to Southouse to produce the statute from 1721 in a hurry. Garrow presents it to Judge Buller, who admits that as Ann accused Renwick of trying to murder her and not merely damaging her clothes, the statute makes the attack a misdemeanor and therefore not a hanging offence. Judge Buller refers the case to the 12 judges of England and Renwick’s case is respited, meaning he will not hang.

Sir Arthur offers to accompany Lady Sarah to court and, after his reaction to the trial, Lady Sarah forces him to admit that his interest is for political reasons. During the trial, Garrow’s friendship with Lady Sarah grows, a fact, which doesn’t go unnoticed by her husband.

William Garrow is played by Andrew Buchan, John Southouse by Alun Armstrong, Judge Buller by Michael Culkin, Lady Sarah Hill by Lyndsey Marshal and Sir Arthur Hill by Rupert Graves.

Fighting For Justice… The 18th century legal world comes to life in new four-part drama on BBC One, inspired by the life of the pioneering barrister William Garrow, starring Andrew Buchan (Cranford, The Fixer), Alun Armstrong (New Tricks, Little Dorrit), Lyndsey Marshal (Rome) and Aidan McArdle (The Duchess, Beautiful People).

Co-created by Tony Marchant (The Knight’s Tale, Holding On, Crime And Punishment), Garrow’s Law is set in the Old Bailey of Georgian London against a backdrop of corruption and social injustice and is based on real cases from the late 18th century.

Each one-hour episode begins with the investigation of a case sourced from the Old Bailey archives, from rape and murder to high treason and corruption, and follows Garrow (Buchan) and his associate Southouse (Armstrong) working to uncover the truth or fight for justice.

In an age where the defence counsel acted in the minority of cases the young Garrow championed the underdog and pioneered the rigorous cross-examination of prosecution that paved the way for our modern legal system of today.

“A gifted maverick, at times arrogant and with a burning sense of destiny, Garrow is driven to change the nature of the trial against a backdrop of social and political upheaval,” says Jamie Isaacs, Executive Producer, Twenty Twenty Television.

Garrow’s Law is a Twenty Twenty/Shed Media Scotland production for BBC One. The series was commissioned by Mark Bell, the BBC’s Commissioning Editor for Arts, for BBC Knowledge.

Garrow (Andrew Buchan) and his associate, Southouse

(Alun Armstrong), investigate crimes in Georgian London

A new four-part legal drama inspired by the life of pioneering barrister William Garrow comes to BBC One. It is co-created by Tony Marchant and stars Andrew Buchan, Alun Armstrong and Lyndsey Marshal.

In the late 18th century, Garrow, a young, idealistic barrister, is given his first criminal defence case at the Old Bailey by attorney and mentor John Southouse. The case is brought by Mary Pace, who needs a barrister to defend her innocent brother, Peter, who is falsely accused by renowned thief-taker, Forrester, of robbing a man at gunpoint.

At the Old Bailey, Garrow meets the prosecuting barrister, Oxford-educated Silvester, who quickly becomes Garrow’s nemesis. Silvester wins the case and the infamously harsh Judge Buller sentences Peter to death. Garrow is devastated but his performance nonetheless catches the eye of Lady Sarah Hill, who is in court taking notes for her husband, politician Sir Arthur Hill.

Garrow is invited to dinner at Sir Arthur and Lady Sarah’s home but talk around the table of crime and punishment offends Garrow’s sense of justice and he leaves in disgust.

Lady Sarah Hill takes notes at a magistrate’s hearing of a young maidservant, Elizabeth Jarvis, who is accused of murdering her newborn baby. Her mistress, Mrs Tarling, discovered her and the case is brought before Judge Buller at the Old Bailey. Lady Sarah goes to Southouse and insists that Garrow defend Elizabeth and that she will pay. Southouse has no choice but to instruct Garrow and they visit Elizabeth at Newgate Prison.

In court, Garrow is well prepared, having visited an obstetrician with a queasy Southouse and gathered vital medical evidence. He discredits the evidence of the prosecution witnesses – Mrs Tarling and surgeon William Herring – and advises Elizabeth to defend herself to the jury as law dictates he is not allowed to do so. His method of defence works and the jury find Elizabeth not guilty. She is released.

A jubilant Garrow vows to change the law and bring justice to the defenceless and he tells Southouse that he hopes the support of Lady Sarah will help him do so. Southouse does not approve.

William Garrow is played by Andrew Buchan, John Southouse by Alun Armstrong, Forrester by Steven Waddington, Silvester by Aidan McArdle, Judge Buller by Michael Culkin, Lady Sarah Hill by Lyndsey Marshal and Sir Arthur Hill by Rupert Graves.

The late 18th century was a period of great change, a time of agricultural and industrial revolution in Britain and political revolution in France.

The rights of individuals as outlined by Thomas Paine in The Rights Of Man and in the American Declaration Of Independence, and ideas of universal enfranchisement, began to take shape as part of the continuing age of enlightenment.

But it was still a world where rough justice was the order of the day.

In London’s Old Bailey, the innocent and guilty alike could find themselves fighting for their lives before baying mobs and judges more interested in their lunch than any legal niceties.

Enter William Garrow, a brilliant young barrister who, in the space of 10 years, revolutionised the legal system, bringing about through the sheer force of his personality the introduction of the adversarial system that still operates in British courts today.

Surprisingly, explains Tony Marchant, writer of Garrow’s Law, BBC One’s new four-part drama series, Garrow is little known today, even among barristers whose daily work still follows his blueprint.

Tony’s interest in Garrow was sparked by production company Twenty Twenty after the Old Bailey had published online transcripts of cases going back 200 years.

“These transcripts were a fantastic oral and written account of the period,” he says. “Reading the words of the accused and the prosecutors gave me an insight into the history. Around 1,000 cases over the course of a decade revolved around Garrow, a trailblazer who changed the trial forever.

“Until his emergence, anyone accused of a crime was put in the dock, often with no-one to defend them. Judges thought that all they had to do was speak for themselves – they could be hung or pardoned depending on how they answered the questions. Obviously that was skewed massively towards the prosecution.”

The youthful Garrow, played by Andy Buchan, who played Jem Hearne in BBC One’s Cranford and Mercer in ITV1′s action drama The Fixer, became an attorney’s assistant at 15.

Once qualified as a barrister by the age of 23, he ripped into the prosecutors at the Old Bailey. During his legal studies he watched obsessively what passed for fair trials and set about redressing the balance, attacking prosecution witnesses with verbal assaults that undermined their credibility.

“At the time, all prosecutions were private and taken out by the so-called victim,” says Tony, “but a lot of those prosecutions were reward-driven, brought about because somebody would earn reward money. Everything was skewed against what we call defendants now, prisoners then.

“There was little or no representation, you could be hung for pickpocketing, tree felling or poaching, all sorts of trivial things, it wasn’t only innocence or guilt that was at stake, it was people’s lives.”

Emerging as the dominant force at the Old Bailey throughout the 1780s, Garrow turned cross-examination into an art form, revelling in the celebrity it brought him.

But inevitably his rebellious nature made enemies among his contemporaries and higher up in the establishment.

“Garrow was called the Billingsgate Boy because his route into the law was quite unorthodox and he didn’t go to Oxford,” Tony explains.

“We don’t know a lot about him, but he came from a lower middle class background in Uxbridge and worked for an attorney called John Southouse [played by Alun Armstrong].

“Garrow was considered common and ignorant by his rivals and had the insecurity of not being as high-born as his contemporaries.”

What little is known of Garrow’s private life is extraordinary. He lived with Sarah (played by Lyndsey Marshal), the former wife of Sir Arthur Hill (played by Rupert Graves), an MP with his own interest in law and order. Hill not only resented Garrow as an upstart who was too big for his boots, but wanted revenge for being made a cuckold.

“The real scandal, and something we might explore in a second series,” says Tony, “is that Garrow brought up Hill’s two children – an arrangement that at the time was completely unknown.”

Given the limited knowledge of Garrow’s life, how much licence did Tony have to work on the character?

“I invented and extemporarised on what is known to make an interesting drama, but you have to be truthful,” he says.

“Trying to give a literal account would be self-defeating and not very interesting. What is interesting is seeing how his impact threatened the status quo.

“Audiences enjoy characters who are passionate, wayward and rock the boat, but who are vulnerable because of their insecurities. The personal and professional sides of Garrow’s Law run along together.

“There’s his forbidden love affair with Sarah Hill and a kind of father-son relationship with Southouse, who disapproves of the way he conducts himself in court while grudgingly admitting that it’s effective.

“That relationship is based on affection and friendship but Southouse is more of a traditionalist who respects the etiquette of the law, while Garrow is trying to outgrow his former mentor and want to throw everything up in the air. It’s a classic rites of passage thing.”

The cases Garrow fights are drawn from actual examples on the Old Bailey archive.

“We feature a major case in each episode and also a smaller ‘B case’,” says Tony. “For the first episode I chose infanticide as the prime example of where there was no presumption of innocence. In such cases, isolated young women, often maidservants impregnated by their masters, had to prove that they didn’t kill their child.

“Garrow invented the term innocent until proven guilty and went on to try to establish that in law and change the bias where the innocent are required to disprove the prosecution.”

The legal system of the time also relied heavily on the work of “thief takers”, effectively bounty hunters, who Tony describes as “the embodiment of the corruption of justice”.

In the third episode, Garrow takes on those who think nothing of framing the innocent for generous rewards often out of all proportion to the sums stolen in the first place.

The second episode also covers a now important legal principle which Garrow helped to establish.

“I came across a remarkable case that had the whole of London convulsed a hundred years before Jack The Ripper,” Tony explains.

“A man they called the London Monster had been stabbing the thighs and buttocks of mainly middle class gentlewomen, creating not only a sense of hysteria and terror but exposing the inability of the police, the Bow Street Runners, to catch the culprit. The Home Office, especially, felt under siege because they were failing to protect Londoners.”

The solution, almost inevitably, was to find a scapegoat, in this case an unsavoury character that even Garrow felt reluctant to defend.

“He decides to take the case as an example of ‘the cab rank rule’, which establishes the obligation of a barrister to accept any work that comes his way,” Tony says. “That you defend whoever you need to defend regardless of your own personal sense of whether they are guilty or not shows Garrow learning that, if the man isn’t represented in court and is hung, then that is just a lynching.”

The final story concerns treason and sedition. “As the series progresses we up the stakes as Garrow’s enemies become more powerful with the Attorney General and Home Secretary involved,” he says.

“There are very good reasons why we chose these particular cases.”

Such was Garrow’s impact on the legal system that it’s surprising that so few people have heard of him.

“Even some barristers haven’t,” Tony agrees, “but if it weren’t for him they wouldn’t enjoy the freedoms to ply their trade and there wouldn’t be the adversarial system of cross examination we have today.

“I don’t really know why he wasn’t given the credit he deserves, maybe it’s because, as he got older, he moved from defence to prosecution to King’s Counsel to judge to become Attorney General – it’s the classic journey of someone who starts out as a trailblazing radical and becomes part of the status quo he once condemned.

“There’s perhaps a story there, but in drama terms it’s always better to write about people at the height of their passions than in the depths of cynicism.”

Usually associated with hard-hitting contemporary drama such as the RTS award-winning Holding On for BBC One and the Bafta-winning Mark Of Cain for Channel 4, the Daily Telegraph once described Tony Marchant as the “conscience of British tv drama”.

Although he previously adapted Dickens’s Great Expectations and Dostoevsky’s Crime And Punishment for the BBC, he agrees that Garrow’s Law is something of a departure.

“With the adaptations I was interested in the story and great literature. This is probably a first as I do feel that I’m trying to present historical developments in a way that is engaging and entertaining.

“There are obvious contemporary resonances. When Garrow started to defend prisoners there were all sorts of restrictions – you weren’t allowed to see the indictment against your client or copies of the depositions; you weren’t allowed to visit your client in Newgate Prison; you weren’t allowed to address the jury or make an opening or closing address.

“You could call character witnesses, but they weren’t compelled to turn up and most of the time they didn’t. It was very hard for a defence counsel.

“On top of that, there was no presumption of innocence. In Garrow’s Law I’m saying look at what he had to contend with and what he was fighting for and ask whether those rights are in danger of being eroded 300 years later.”

Ultimately, courtroom dramas make for excellent television.

“If you do them well they are inherently potent and fascinating,” Tony agrees. “I think the tone of Garrow’s Law is perhaps lighter than I have done for a while. Episode two is a lot more comic and ironic, it has dark bits but it’s fun.

“I didn’t want to be finger-wagging or didactic, I hope I’m going to make people think but also be engaged. We are still dealing with heavy topics – infanticide, rape, murder – but we’re trying to get at the truth. Garrow is a man who wanted to get at the truth.”

In common with many barristers in England, Andy Buchan knew nothing of William Garrow before he was asked to play him in BBC One’s new four-part drama series Garrow’s Law.

“That he is so little known is quite embarrassing really, isn’t it?” says Andy on the phone from South Africa, where he is filming The Sinking Of The Laconia for BBC Two, about the sinking of a British liner in the Second World War.

“Garrow’s story is fascinating and because he is unknown I think it’s all the better that it is being aired. It’s much more interesting to play a real historical figure and, because he’s not famous, rather than doing a copy or a caricature I have to rely on the known facts in the history books to help understand how to play him.”

Andy relishes unleashing the aggression that Garrow, the pioneer of cross-examination, used so effectively in his defence cases.

“It was a huge crossroads in history,” he says of his character. “He was sick of seeing people branded for no reason and courts that would get through batches of trials every eight minutes.

“The focus was very much on lunch, and that’s no exaggeration… it is written in the history books that lunch was the primary focus of the day and the judge really looked forward to just getting through the morning.

“People were being sent to prison, even hanged, on no evidence and Garrow stepped in and started rattling a few cages by posing insightful questions. He’s very aggressive; the whole thing is based on attack.”

How easy was it for Andy to build up a picture of Garrow?

“There are bits you can find on the internet, but that’s really searching for scraps,” he says. “There’s a book called Fighting For Justice by John Hostettler, which has chapters on him and a couple of other books as well, but not many.”

To get a feel for the work of a barrister, Andy went to Kingston Crown Court to observe some of Garrow’s 21st century successors in action.

“Their turns of phrase are incredibly interesting,” he says. “Barristers have an element of actor about them; they enjoy that stage, which was interesting to see. Some of the phraseology was kind of complicated and quite flowery, always very polite and respectful but with undercurrents. I also watched their body language and the tempo at which they spoke.”

The language and procedure of modern courts has developed over centuries, but Andy was intrigued to hear the phrase “I put it to you…” still in use.

“It appears in our scripts from the Old Bailey archive transcripts, but was also used in Kingston on the day I went to watch them, so it has kind of travelled through the centuries. It’s part of the code of conduct and respect for the judge they use while trying to attack at their own pace,” he says.

The main focus for portraying Garrow was on his manner in court and his aggression and unforgiving nature.

“He’s very hot tempered and there’s a real cut and thrust nature to the questioning – Garrow likes to get his claws into a witness.

“Getting your mouth around the language of the time was also a challenge, but Tony Marchant’s scripts and the colour in them are fantastic and the differences between the characters produce a lot of light and shade.”

As a factual historical piece, much of which was filmed in Dumbarton in Scotland and using Edinburgh locations to double for the 18th century Old Bailey, Andy says the actors and production team worked hard to achieve a convincing feel to proceedings.

“We’ve tried to avoid modern phraseology because that would be a lie and softening it, we wanted to paint it as it was.”

Garrow’s cases were conducted he said in very mob-like atmosphere. “The juries were loud and bawdy and would throw insults at witnesses as they passed. When Garrow comes into that arena he provokes one of two reactions – either absolute shock at what he is saying, as no-one has previously been questioned in that manner, or a real reaction to the fact he said a lot of unthinkable things.

“There’s definitely an element of Garrow against the rest – even his boss, Southouse [played by Alun Armstrong] was forever trying to tame and temper him, saying ‘sit back, things will come in time, you’re too aggressive, too disrespectful’.”

Working with Alun Armstrong, Andy says was quite an experience.

“I’d never met him, but I knew of his work… I think stomach ache is the best way of describing it – your laughter muscles are worked more than you could ever imagine. Alun is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met, this tidal wave of humour keeps coming at you, and he’s fantastic to be around.”

Enjoying each others’ company, the two actors found that the father-son relationship between Southouse and Garrow, one of the key relationships in the series, came naturally.

“We seemed to develop that relationship very easily, which was good, the rest of it is down to the script.”

Garrow’s other relationship is played by Lyndsey Marshal as Sarah Hill, the wife of MP Sir Arthur Hill.

“She straddles two worlds,” says Andy. “She’s married to a gentleman who is on the other side to Garrow. It was interesting playing that relationship because Garrow would sometimes find himself in circles he wasn’t meant to be. It was also all hush hush because of this girl, but he couldn’t help himself.”

Through the scripts, Andy believes the audience will get a sense of the huge wave of change taking place in late 18th century society.

“There’s an uneasy feel at times, dangerous and threatening, but also positive that innocent people were hopefully going to be saved.”

Does he feel there are any parallels to draw with the modern world?

“Justice channels itself throughout the years. What Garrow puts forward in the manner of his questioning is important and hopefully people will be grateful for his input into the legal system.”

So why did Garrow take on the legal establishment, his motive in defending the poor surely wasn’t financial gain?

“I don’t think it was monetary,” says Andy. “Here was an aspiring young legal student, who used to sit in an observational capacity at court and watch case after case as they unravelled. He saw with his own eyes this kind of pig pen beneath him, where things were running wild and nothing was being done about it. Although he got paid, it wasn’t really about that. His passion came from the heart.”

Set in the Old Bailey of Georgian London against a backdrop of corruption and social injustice, Garrow’s Law is a new four-part legal drama inspired by the life of pioneering barrister William Garrow.

The series, co-created by Tony Marchant, is based on real legal cases from the late 18th century. Andrew Buchan (Cranford, Party Animals) as Garrow leads a cast including Alun Armstrong (New Tricks) and Lyndsey Marshal (Rome).

From rape and murder to high treason and corruption, each episode begins with the investigation of a real crime sourced from the Old Bailey archives of the day. In an age where defence counsel was for the minority, the youthful Garrow and his associate Southouse (Armstrong) work to uncover the truth or fight for justice, championing the underdog and pioneering the rigorous cross-examination of prosecution witnesses that paved the way for the modern legal system.

A gifted maverick, at times arrogant and with a burning sense of destiny, Garrow’s drive to change the nature of the trial creates powerful enemies both in the corrupt underworld and among the political elite.