Miscarriage of justice

TV Review: 'God save the queen and my lords, the chief justices." And God save us all from the piece of self-important trash that the BBC smeared on to our screens this week, The Verdict, a "reality" drama about a fictional rape case (yes, another one) that was about as edifying and credible as Jade Goody on a postage stamp.

After hours (and hours) of watching intellectually constipated TV celebrities waft their prejudices, ignorance and forks full of Parma ham and grated beetroot around my living room, I feel like purging my constitution with a dose of cod liver oil and vaulting over Skellig Michael.

Ladies and gentlemen of the court, let me inform you of the facts of this case.

Exhibit A - bunch of unknown actors (and probably an intense method acting coach) are given a scenario, thus: famous footballer and his mates in hotel room with a couple of 19-year-old girls; one girl accuses blokes of gang rape; her mate sells story to tabloid; footie star, in court wearing posh suit, says he didn't do nuffin, me lud (actually, footie star more or less says girl was all over him like steaming mucus and if he'd wanted a bit of action he'd have had no trouble finding it). Capiche?

Exhibit B - bunch of 12 "celebs" unboxed into a jury pen by day and incarcerated in a London hotel for three nights to deliberate on this entirely fictitious, salacious, irresponsible and tawdry bit of play-acting.

Oh, and exhibit C - an entirely real judiciary trying the case, a nice opportunity to powder their wigs in public and make a bit of pocket money.

This awful trivialisation of a serious issue (there is a conviction rate of less than 5 per cent in the UK for reported rapes) has nothing to do with shedding light on the adversarial system and everything to do with cheap sex. It really would put you off your dinner to watch Jeffrey Archer cornering the nubile and flaxen-haired Jennifer Ellison over the buffet table (much to the chagrin of everybody's favourite head boy, Michael Portillo) and asking her if she could wriggle out from under an attacker ("Too right I could"). But it was possibly even more depressing to watch Stan Collymore fight a losing battle with his testosterone levels and metaphorically head-butt Honor Blackman every time she opened her mouth.

"Why a gang-bang?" asked Patsy Palmer, questioning the veracity of the victim's sobbing account, over yet another sumptuous dinner of sauteed ex-soap star with a bit of embezzlement endive on the side (though this question was marginally more palatable than Palmer's earlier musing: "I just can't get my head around this anal thing").

"Oh," said Ellison, "if you go to Max Clifford with that, it's worth at least £20,000 (€30,000) more." This is Big Brother without the bedclothes, and a nasty piece of work, your honour. Send 'em down.

A SECOND, BUT apparently final, series of the witty and innovative time-travel detective show, Life on Mars, began this week with an increasingly perplexed and at times panic-stricken Sam Tyler (John Simm) literally asphyxiating in both the present/past and future/present.

For those who missed series one of this clever drama, the premise is taxingly simple: modern-day policeman Tyler, in a coma after a car crash in 2006, wakes up in 1973 and, through a haze of blue cigarette smoke, Wagon Wheel wrappers and frothy hairdos, finds himself alive and kicking and working for Manchester CID. Terrific opportunity to cue Sweeney sensibilities and shirt collars, brutal police tactics ("That's a nice black suit, do you want an eye in the same colour?"), sexism, homophobia, racism, bloated livers and chain-smoking burly detectives with lungs like torn stockings. So what's new? The decision to make the series finite is eminently sensible (why didn't somebody apply the same thinking to Lost?), and if the premise had been wearing a little thin by the close of series one, the enticing possibility of an explanation (as promised via a chilling telephone conversation during which Sam was told he'll be "coming home soon") should keep the fans tuned in.

An innovative take on the feisty copper/detective partnerships that littered our pre-digital goggle-boxes, from Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) to Starsky and Hutch, Life on Mars is hum-along fun if you're over 40, and it's not too late to get hooked. With Sam's boss, the intriguingly named Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), getting stuck into pints of Double Diamond, series two just might get paternalistically personal.

WITH ROBBIE WILLIAMS in rehab and Oasis consigned to the green room, The Brit Awards (which went out live on TV for the first time in 18 years), felt disappointingly tame, despite having the quixotic, back-combed, back-biting Russell Brand at the helm. Brand riffed away in his crotch-hugging hipsters without his occasional vicious brilliance, his Dickensian sloth and verbal filthitude somewhat muffled and diluted by a packed Earls Court stadium brim full of silky party dresses and dewy-eyed celebrities (and that was just Take That). He did, however, have some warm moments of signature discourteousness, describing Amy Winehouse's moniker as an apt description for the current state of her liver and, when the young James Morrison picked up a statuette for "best male", he reminded us that were we ants, Morrison would have to have sex with the queen.

The big story of the night, however, was Take That. After 11 years in the wilderness, the band were rewarded, in the first public live vote for best single, for their song, Patience, which they also performed. The singularly un-empathetic Brand observed that given the volatile relationship between Garry Barlow and Robbie Willams, next year Williams would be PM and the band would be imprisoned as shoe-bombers.

Barlow, in my wholly subjective and completely arbitrary opinion, looks like a man bolstered by revenge, a man still huddling against the cold winds of rejection, a man not impartial to eating his own liver (admittedly probably healthier than Winehouse's).

Anyway, they appeared to be a more popular choice than the churlish Oasis, who picked up a lifetime achievement award presented not by Ringo Starr, as had been anticipated, but by a surprisingly sycophantic Brand. Paraphrasing Liam Gallagher (one generally has to these days), the Brit bauble was met with the words (kind of): "As we get nominated for f***-all these days, this will have to do." Charmer, eh?

NAKED GIRL SURVEYS herself in frosted mirror in the ladies' room of her gym; behind her, naked girl two, presumably her trainer, asks her, fingers trailing across her damp skin: "Are you getting a good stretch in your hip-flexers?" Now there's a question.

Lascivious, lusty, leggy and lachrymose, The L Word, the chi-chi lesbian drama now enjoying its fourth season in the US, has arrived on our side of the pond courtesy of groovy Channel 6. The series is a highly sexed romp about the lives and loves of a bunch of size- zero lesbian friends who live and work in a trendy bit of LA. The women, on the evidence of episode one, all hang out in the Planet Cafe (some in leather belly-tops), a grungy coffee-house owned by the predatory European, Marina (Karina Lombard), where they survey the "fresh bait", debate the merits of assisted conception and the viability of the iced sperm they've stored in the cryobank, and, elbowing one another's green tea, say things like "I'm just a little tense right now" (a lot).

One of the main players, Jenny (Mia Kirshner), is a writer who has arrived in LA to live with her boyfriend. He's a nice guy, an LA flannel-shirt/paisley-print intellectual, but still he doesn't notice that Jenny is spending more than quality time with her new friend, Marina, despite the content of her novel that he enjoys reading aloud (and which she writes in the garage wearing baggy pyjamas and Gucci string vests).

"It's like you revile your own craving," Jenny writes.

"God, I'm so lucky to have you," her boyfriend sighs (wake up and read the tea leaves, mate, your pay-cheques are numbered in this series).

It's all fantastically good fun really, chock full of moody ladies with boyish breasts and bespectacled psychotherapists. I'm just not terribly sure who the show is aimed at, but with more girl-on-girl than a muddy ladies' rugby scrum, one imagines that enjoyment of the show will not be hampered by gender.