TV's touch of legal realityBoston LawBBC1, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 10.30pmVictoria MacCallumReality has always been a disposable asset in US legal television dramas: LA Law was more interested in its characters' love lives than legal intricacies, while the idea that a character as neurotic as Ally McBeal could ever have time to practise law was never believable.So the appearance on BBC1 of 'Boston Law', a documentary following the 'real life' legal activities of the city's law makers and enforcers, was a very refreshing change.

The first programme focused on Lisa Medeiros, a public defender in Boston - the same city as, but miles away from, Ally McBeal's polished glamour.No high-profile and high-profit court battles for Ms Medeiros, whose job is to defend the city's low life - the drug addicts, parole violators and welfare fraudsters - in a strangely friendly local courtroom environment; a long way indeed from the popular 'zero tolerance' perception of US justice.What was refreshing about the programme was not merely the portrayal of grass roots justice in all its bare and unglamorous glory, but the portrayal of Lisa herself, who achieved the near-impossible task of making the law as displayed on television seem a sympathetic and public-spirited profession.Although occasionally American-isms grated - for example telling a heroin addict that she obviously 'had issues' - Ms Medeiros came across as a thoroughly good egg.She achieved the rare double of working hard, dealing with more than 2,000 cases a year, yet expressing a complete lack of cynicism about her clients, who were 'good people in horrid situations', and 'all victims of something or other - poverty, a crummy world, drug addiction'.One cannot help but wonder what will happen to people like Lisa if George W Bush introduces less-than-liberal attitudes to the courts.

Until then, however, sit back and relish a legal programme that is refreshingly different, grippingly plotted, and most importantly, doesn't feature lawyers whose skirts are smaller than their IQs.