Showtrial Season 2 is clunky, stuffed… and better than Season 1

It has been a few years since the BBC Showtrial followed a high-stakes murder case until the jury gave its verdict on who did it.

If you liked the sharp crime drama, you’re in luck, because it’s back for a second season, but hopefully not if you were particularly attached to the characters, because this installment has a big cast change to tackle a new profile. murder case.

Set in Brighton – although the five-part film was filmed in Belfast so doesn’t look much like Brighton – the victim this time is renowned climate activist Marcus Calderwood, who is riding his bike when a car crashes into the back of him.

In his final moments, he identifies a police officer as the culprit, nicknamed Officer X. X is unmasked as a PC Justin Mitchell (Michael Socha), who is completely unconcerned with the pile of evidence against him. He has a kind of Joker-like arrogant joy in the silliness of the police interrogation and the deployment of his apparently false alibis.

There are a number of new revelations – including how exactly Mitchell had a problem with Calderwood – so you go back and forth on personal theories about what happened.

Mitchell seeks out lawyer Sam Malik (Image: BBC)Fool me once(Adeel Akhtar) to take on his case, given his reputation for saving lost causes that are likely to blame. Malik is less a Saul Goodman-type scumbag than someone who doesn’t much care about anything – the reasons become apparent as we go along. Malik’s veiled cry for help is louder than Mitchell’s, at least existentially.

Like the first season of Showtrialwe walk across the hall to the prosecution and investigating detectives, led by no-nonsense DI Miles Southgate (Joe Dempsie) and Leila Hassoun-Kenny (Nathalie Armin). Given that the suspect is a police officer, there is the added problem that the Brighton Police Department has to parachute in detectives from another force. It’s ripe “Who watches the watchmen?” thing.

The information is well conveyed and we get snippets of the media uproar surrounding the case. One journalist describes Calderwood’s death as a “political execution.” It’s something the police are terribly aware of, with anti-police bias and a “dominant narrative” at play.

If you watched the last season of Showtrial or the Netflix documentary series Test by mediaNone of these topics about the media’s impact on a verdict will be terribly new. But that’s okay, because there are a lot of other things going on.

Like a teetering Jenga tower, in just five quick episodes, there’s a balanced idea about an idea, and there’s a lot to deal with. When we get to the mention of dubious extrajudicial executions in Colombia, things start to become a bit exaggerated.

The loudest drum concerns policing issues. “It’s not just a bad apple, the basket itself is rotten”, says the same journalist from before, at a press conference.

There’s cronyism, public distrust, evidence mismanagement, vile copper group talk, and gallows humor, the last of which starts to make more sense when you glimpse the horrible things the cops are responding to.

With the dual focus on the prosecution and defense, we get an approach from both sides of the debate. “Who protects us?” an officer asks while being interrogated. Ben Richards’ writing is once again brisk, but subtlety is not the preferred flavor.

The issue-led plot is accompanied by issue-led characters and subplots – you may need a cheat sheet to keep track of everyone involved, all with first names, last names, and some even nicknames.

While the first season’s college student victim had more emotion in her loss, here Calderwell is more a symbol than a person to be mourned — even if climate activism gets lost in the mix of everything else.

Yes, it’s clunky and the themes are dense, but as a breakneck police procedural that turns into a courtroom drama, it’s sure to keep viewers hooked.

Showtrial will be available on BBC iPlayer from 6am on Sunday 6th October and will air on BBC One on Sunday nights at 9pm.