Trusting in communication

TRUSTBBC1 Thursdays, 9pm Jeremy Fleming

'Trust' is a pretty odd name for a drama in which no one seems to look each other in the eye when they are talking.

Characters in the BBC's recently launched six-part drama series set in a City law firm communicate by moving their heads close to one another and then looking in different directions.

It is as if they are posing for group photographs every time they meet.

The prime offender in all of this is Robson Green, who plays the great-at-work lousy-at-home younger partner, Stephen Bradley.

Maybe all that crazy swan necking comes in part from his brief career as a pop star.

Elsewhere, 'Trust' is full of those quirky camera angles that appear to invest speed and energy into relatively lifeless situations, as if a lunchtime trip to the sandwich shop would transform itself into a fable from the Arabian nights if it could be sped up, slowed down, or shot from a bird's-eye view.

Apart from Bradley, characters include feisty, sexy, chippy Northern Irish trainee Maria Acklam (Eva Birtwhistle); sensitive gay senior lawyer Martin Greig (Neil Stuke); ambitious decent assistant 'Ash' Carter (Chiwetel Ejiofor); and senior assistant Annie Taylor (Sarah Parish), who manages a similar life/work balance as Bradley.

These play their way through a predictable run of office problems: spouses wanting divorces from money-bitten lawyers wedded to their work, sexual office tensions, and dodgy deals.

There are also some strange twists - a nymphomaniac German client, for example.

Apart from the excessive choreography, the acting is bearable.

The plotlines are a bit of a stretch and the attention to legal detail not great - how many management buy-outs can be completed by signing just one document? - but that is how it should be with a drama.

When the trainee kisses the partner while thinking he is asleep, it comes close to turning into fantasy.

The big problem is that there is no dramatic dynamic at the firm itself.

External things cause the issues - bent clients, discontented spouses and so on - while the lawyers themselves, though Maria is gobby and most of them are vaguely aggressive, are all decent folks underneath.

They are all a bit samey.

There are no arguments that are not resolved between them pretty quickly.

It seems to take partnerships at face value.

One character you would not want to take at face value is Alan Cooper-Fozard, the managing partner of the firm which bears his name, played by Ian McShane.

For those who watched 'Lovejoy', the antiques dealer has been on a sabbatical and returned as a lawyer with a strong interest in cosmetics.

The PG as he is known in the office (for 'Power and the Glory', rather than Tips, because he has the power to ruin careers and to cover them in glory), makes various warpainted appearances, dispensing pithy legal epithets with the flutter of lashes doused in mascara and arch of heavily pencilled brows.

In fact, the greasepaint almost turns in a better performance than McShane.

INTERVIEW: Plotting the battle between good and evil

The writer and producer team who worked on 'Trust' have prior experience in legal drama.

Simon Block and Jake Lushington both worked together on 'North Square', Channel Four's slick series about barristers' chambers in Leeds.

The writer, Mr Block, says legal dramas are 'few and far between' on UK television, but that they are good for dramatising because 'they break down easily into issues of good and evil, and even of life and death'.

He says the attractions of writing about lawyers are the 'negotiations between ethics and money', the 'extraordinarily high stakes', and the 'glamorous, but incredibly stressful lifestyle'.

Mr Lushington says the series represents office life at the opposite end of the spectrum form the BBC's hit comedy 'The Office'.

He says a realistic portrayal is not Mr Block's style: 'He is more of a fable writer.'

The themes they wanted to draw out - after extensive research which was conducted with a number of City lawyers - were 'the notion of work as an extended family in competition with families at home' and 'the way people identify with their businesses'.

One challenge the pair faced was the eruption of the Enron scandal about six months after work had started on the project.

Mr Lushington says: 'We incorporated a new plotline which presented - in a minor way - the same issues that had cropped up with Enron.

In the latter episodes, a client attempts to bribe one of the lawyers to cover up due diligence relating to a drugs company, which is fraudulently attempting to boost its share value.'

He adds: 'We wanted to look at the topical question of how you can be a moral capitalist.'

However, Mr Lushington says the intention was not to be political: 'If people see the programme as a confection of elements of "LA Law" and "Ally McBeal", I would be proud of that.'

Jeremy Fleming