What do you called 10,000 lawyers chained together at the bottom of the sea? A good start! That joke has encapsulates the feeling many have had towards the legal profession for centuries. Some agree with Shakespeare’s opinion in Henry VI part 2, “First thing we do, kill all the lawyers’.

Of course we can all name some noble lawyers: Atticus Finch, Perry Mason, Sir Robert Morton. Sadly, all are fictional but what about William Garrow? Never heard of him? Nor had most people, even members of the legal profession, until the BBC decided on a dramatisation of his life based on actual records from the Old Bailey (The British Central Criminal Court in London).

William Garrow (1760-1840) was the British barrister (attorney) who coined the phrase ‘Innocent until proven guilty’, who introduced the adversarial court system where the prosecution is thoroughly challenged to provide the best possible defence for the accused and who stamped out the corruption and paying of witnesses which was common in the 18th century.

Does this make for good television? Courtroom dramas are often exciting. Garrow was practising modern law in its infancy. In those savage days, people could be hanged for cutting cloth, branded or transported for slight misdemeanours, imprisoned for years for debt with little real justice. In the first episode, we see Garrow (Andrew Buchan from Cranford) defending a young serving maid whose illegitimate baby died and she hid the body in the cellar. Without his defence, she would have been sent to the gallows.

The second episode, London is in thrall to the London Monster (100 years before Jack the Ripper). This is a man who goes up to young women in the street and cuts them with a knife. The mob finds an unpleasant, unsympathetic young man who they accuse of being the culprit. Garrow meets the man in Newgate prison, dislikes him and suspects he is guilty, yet finally agrees to defend him to the best of his ability. The principle is thus enshrined that everyone, no matter how unpleasant, must have a robust defence counsel at their trial.

The prosecuting barrister, the baddie we can all boo, is played by Aidan McArdle. The love interest Lady Sarah Hill (another man’s wife who the real Garrow ended up living with, scandalous for the time) is played by Lindsey Marshal.

Those were savage days – cruel, corrupt and unjust. This adaptation, in four episodes, is an exciting, interesting drama but most of all it shows us how men like Garrow have made the plight of mankind that little bit better. It makes us grateful for the system we have today and also should make us aware that if we are not careful, it could all be lost in unreasoning hysteria.