I have finally recovered, so this will be the last of three posts in a row centered around a movie/show I watched while I couldn’t do much else. At a pace of one episode per day, I watched a courtroom drama mini-series set in London called You Don’t Know Me. I cannot recommend it for children, but last week’s piece was about a show tailor made for the kids so I don’t feel too bad about that. The show starts with the prosecutor’s closing argument, and the evidence is stacked heavily against the defendant—the gun used in the murder found in his apartment, in a shoebox with his passport and some money no less, the victim’s blood recovered from under the defendant’s fingernails, CCTV footage of the defendant driving to the scene of the murder, and cell tower data placing the defendant at the scene of the murder too.

With all of that wrapped up in a nice summary package, the real drama starts. The defendant has fired his own solicitor so that he could deliver his closing argument himself. Through a series of extended flashbacks, the real story unfolds, and there is a surprise at almost every juncture. How the judge allowed him to tell the whole narrative strains credulity from a legal procedural perspective, but people who aren’t attorneys probably won’t need to suspend disbelief as much as I did. I won’t spoil anything in case people want to watch the series, but it is definitely one where you can debate the ending after the credits roll on the final episode.

This mini-series was based on a book. I commented a few weeks ago about how movies based on books are almost never as rich as the original works. Extended television series face the same problem to a lesser extent, as those who read the Game of Thrones books would surely attest. The extended television series, though, is what ushered in the golden age of television that we have experienced over the last decade or so. This is perhaps because of the genre’s ability to tell more complex and layered narratives and to delve deeper into the character’s minds than was possible before, to be more like a book.