BBC drama Showtrial returns for a second series

And if you missed the first run, the good news is that it doesn’t really matter, as this season has a new story and cast.

Writer and creator Ben Richards says: “After the success of series one we were faced with a big question – what do we do, how do we take the show forward, and what’s the format we’re going to use?

“We decided that we would start with a new case, and a new case demands new personnel. It would be too much of a coincidence to have the same lawyers working on another emblematic case and that’s the premise of Showtrial.”

He adds: “The case has to be big, it can’t just be an ordinary murder trial, or drug smuggling case, it has to be a big emblematic case with grit that takes the imagination of the country. It has to say something about the country in which we live.”

The case in the new run of Showtrial begins with high-profile climate activist Marcus Calderwood being left for dead in a violent hit and run. With his dying breath, he identifies his killer, who happens to be a serving policeman.

That certainly gives Richards the scope to tackle a few very big issues. He says: “At the time I was thinking about, not so much climate change actually, but activism and protest. That was a kind of starting point – what happens if a big, emblematic climate activist gets murdered?

“That was the starting point, from then it fed into an idea of what if the victim had been the subject of stalking by a police officer. That then takes you into another whole area because obviously the police have very much been under the microscope for a number of different reasons after some high-profile cases of serving police officers’ own criminality and various other problems that exist, in particular in the Met.”

The prime suspect in the case is the cocky, charismatic PC Justin Mitchell (Michael Socha).

Ben says: “The key thing about the suspect is that they have to be unlikeable – like Talitha Campbell in the first Showtrial, she’s not likeable either. She wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but she was interesting, and ditto Justin. Justin is even more of a challenge in some ways because it’s much more clear that he’s involved in this crime, our job is to unpack in what way and why.”

The question at the heart of the series is whether Marcus’ death was an accident or an act of premeditated revenge.

Arguing that in court will be Sam Malik (Adeel Akhtar), a defence solicitor with a reputation for winning lost causes but who may not be feeling the pressure more than he lets on, and Leila Hassoun-Kenny (Nathalie Armin), a wry and rigorous CPS lawyer leading the case against the accused.

But with public emotions running high, is a fair trial even possible?