Women Lawyers on TV – the British Experience

This paper examines the portrayal on British television of women as protagonists in TV dramas and how this has altered in the past half century. It focuses particularly on two series which follow the fortunes of two Junior barristers and their career paths, each over two separate series. Harriet Peterson and Martha Costello are both women lawyers who appear on behalf of clients in the courts. The barrister branch of the legal profession in England and Wales has always been regarded as the more prestigious branch of the profession from which, traditionally, judges have been selected. The characters are experienced and successful. They have reached that crucial time when they are hoping to be selected as Queen’s Counsel. This step into the top echelon of the elite branch of the split British legal profession is a major marker in a lawyer’s career. It is from the ranks of Q.C.s that the senior judiciary are chosen and where possible fame lies. This paper looks at their contrasting experiences - the context of women lawyers , the style and nature of the work they are shown as undertaking, the characterisation of the legal profession and in particular the principal protagonists. It also provides the crucial context in which these series were produced. It takes note of the ways in which their male counterparts are portrayed in comparable series The major thing which separates the struggles of Peterson and Costello is the passage of time of some 40 years. The paper explores what changes are found in the way the first and second women lawyer major protagonist appear and the context for these changes. In amongst an extensive roster of drama series centred on lawyers, it should be noted that the series Justice with Harriet Peterson ran between 1971 and 1974 and that of Silk with Martha Costello between 2011 and 2014. 1 This is a long gap which requires to be looked at in some depth.


Background
In 1969 a television version of a 1967 West End play, Justice is a Woman, was broadcast showing a woman barrister as the lead character. She is shown defying the male establishment and, with her subtle prompting and understanding of human nature coaxing a young man accused of rape and murder to engage with the system and fight to establish his innocence. The play's co-author, Jack Roffey, was a successful TV writer who 1 There were 3 series of 13 episodes in Justice -by 2013 the first 2 series were available on DVD and the 3rd series is scheduled for release. 2 series of Silk appeared in between 2011 and 2013. A third series was screened in the UK in March 2014.
had single-handedly written the first British TV lawyer series, Boyd Q.C. with former matinée idol of the 1940s, Michael Dennison, which ran from 1956 to 1964. 2 The actor who was pencilled in to play the woman barrister in the stage version of Justice is a Woman, and who took the role in its television adaptation, was Margaret Lockwood. She, like Dennison, had been a major star of British cinema from as early as the 1930s through the 1940s and early 1950s. She starred in Alfred Hitchcock's acclaimed thriller, The Lady Vanishes (1939) and the courtroom drama The Girl in the News (1940) along with Michael Redgrave. She is probably best remembered for her role as Lady Barbara Skelton, a part-time highwaywoman, in The Wicked Lady (1949). Her film career had stalled somewhat and she had been working in theatre and on television when the opportunity to play barrister, Julia Stanford presented itself. At the age of 53 she accepted. Initially, as noted, it was written for the theatre but it was the TV version in which Lockwood starred, 3 Here she anticipated by some 35 years the trend in the 21st century for woman film stars like Glenn Close and Candice Bergen to shift to television in their later years. 4 Justice is a Woman was transmitted on Thursday 4th September 1969. In view of the success of the single play a series was commissioned using essentially the same character. 5 Julia Stanford was re-named Harriet Peterson and some 2 years after Margaret Lockwood's transmogrification from a highwaywoman into a lawyer, Justice was broadcast on the then sole British commercial channel, ITV ( Independent Television ). The show consisted of 1 hour episodes and, in the standard British style, ran weekly for three 13 week series at the prime time slot of 9 p.m. on Fridays between 8th October 1971 and 14th January 1972, between 9th February 1973 and 4th May 1973 and finally between 22nd February and 29th March 1974.
In 2011 the non-commercial BBC channel started transmission of a series about a woman barrister in her 30s. The main protagonist Martha Costello was played by highly 2 Roffey was also the author of the play and film Hostile Witness (1968), which featured in a prominent role for Sheila Sim as a promising young barrister who starts off defending a QC accused of murder. Despite her obvious competence in exposing the limitations of the case against her client, he decides to take on that role himself half way through the trial. In between these two series with a central female lawyer role we have a large number of male-centred legal series with hardly a woman lawyer appearing. If women lawyers existed and could be shown in a successful series as far back as 1971 then it seems worth asking ourselves why it took some 40 years for a series to appear with the same notion of a female lawyer in a major role. There had been, after all, in the 1980s a breakthrough on the more risk averse field of film of female lawyer protagonists. The roster from 1985 encompassed Glenn Close, 7 Cher, 8 Jessica Lange, 9 Theresa Russell, 10 Barbara Hershey, 11 Cindy Crawford 12 and Reese Witherspoon. 13 We have, then, a somewhat paradoxical situation. Firstly we find British television recognising the existence of women lawyers but then, apparently forgetting about them for forty years during which time cinema produced a significant body of work on this very theme. In order to get a better sense of the significance of the first appearance of a woman lawyer protagonist in 1971 we need some background.

The Changing Context of Women Lawyers in Britain
In 1971 in Britain the proportion of the legal profession who were women was 3%. 14 The profession was split into solicitors who were principally office-based and barristers who appeared in courts only representing clients as Juniors or Queen's Counsel. The latter are able to command higher fees and their rank recognises their skill and eminence as barristers. One became a Q.C. by one's name being put forward discreetly and the process of selection was arcane. Of the barristers called to the Bar, 5.8% were women, the first having been appointed in 1949. In legal education, at the start of the 1970s women were less than 10% of the intake into Law Schools. In the ensuing decades that percentage grew until the figures in the 21st century in Britain reveal around two-thirds of law students were female. Women on the small screen in Britain In order to appreciate fully the significance of the rarity of the female lawyer protagonist it is necessary to indicate the extent of television programming devoted to lawyers in Britain during this period. Women were not featured either in generic procedural products like The Verdict is Yours 26 and Crown Court 27 where the focus was on an individual case and the lawyers were unknown ciphers. There were also ensemble dramas where the focus was not on a single lawyer like Blind Justice, 28 Wing and a Prayer 29 , Trust 30 , New Street Law 31 and North Square 32 . In these we find women lawyers achieving a profile in the background of the narrative. In these ensemble dramas women feature then but their role is never in the forefront with characters such as Anna Crozier ( The Advocates (1991 -1992) -ITV series with a woman writer -Alma Cullen. The ingénue role of Alex Abercorn played by Stella Gonnet is part of a theme for women lawyer characters which stretches from Rumpole and Kavanagh QC through North Square and Silk itself with its opportunities, one might suggest, for the male gaze. 35 What, then, we have is the appearance of women and a recognition that they are a part of the profession. 36 It is not, however, their skills and their lives which are the focus of the many programmes in between Justice and Silk.
As has been noted, Justice had its origins in a stage play. There is a link between the emergence of Justice and the first British legal series reaching British screens before Perry Mason, Boyd Q.C. All the episodes of Boyd were written by Jack Roffey who co-wrote the play 37 from which Justice is a Woman was adapted for Margaret Lockwood.
Martha Costello in Silk was novel in that it had been 40 years since a woman had occupied such a role in a British legal drama series. Her character, however, could be seen as part of an earlier development of male and female ensemble casting developed in the 1990s and in the early part of the 21st century.  In terms of the career trajectories of the actors playing the two central roles in Justice and Silk there is a fascinating contrast. The male series appear, indeed, to have operated on the "bankable star" notion with no unknowns heading up the casts of these series. We get a similar operation in a somewhat different way with Justice and Silk. In the case of Margaret Lockwood, as noted above, we have a screen star whose heyday was some 20 years previously with her roles as Lady Barbara Skelton in The Wicked Lady (1949) and Cast a Dark Shadow (1955). From the late 1950s her film career had ceased and she had returned to the stage. The producers were relying on her past fame to attract audiences.
A slightly different calculation is encountered with the casting of Maxine Peak. She had enjoyed success and significant television exposure in Dinner Ladies , Shameless and 40 pace Grace van Owen whose role could be seen, arguably, as major 41 To be strictly accurate there was a legal series produced by BBC Wales featuring a young coroner returning to take up her mentor's old job on his demise -Mortimer's Law (1986) This involved her with her male assistant solving suspicious deaths and I would classify this as essentially a detective production. It lacked the language, location and trappings which Greenfield, Osborn and Robson (2010)

The work and issues of Peterson and Costello
The set-up in the first series of Justice is the work of a woman barrister in an unspecified Yorkshire town on the Northern circuit. Harriet Peterson appears to have arrived relatively recently. She is divorced with a grown-up son. In her first case we meet her ex-husband.
He is an ex-solicitor now working as a salesman having recently come out of jail and has been expelled from the ranks of his profession. In contrast to her male predecessors, Richard Boyd and most memorably in the public imagination, America's Perry Mason, Harriet's cases do not all turn out particularly well. From the way the "truth-telling" camera shows the narratives, in the earliest episodes, the audience knows her clients are often in the right and yet such is the realist approach taken that they do not always get their just desserts. 43 The kind of cases we see undertaken in the 1970s are a wide range from criminal to civil cases including family matters. By Order of the Magistrates (15th October 1971) -Harriet fails to secure custody of children for her client whose slatternly mother neglects them but who are effectively represented by a scheming local solicitor. The local magistrates are more concerned with their extra-judicial business and social engagements than discussing the matter in depth and the High Court judge resents any suggestion that the magistracy, this cornerstone of British justice, have been derelict in carrying out their duties 47 Duty to the Court (14th January 1972) -successful businesswoman who is accused of murder of her roistering hard-drinking husband turns out to have been a victim of his violence behind closed doors for many years.
domestic violence exposé Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear which appeared as a Penguin Special in 1974 (Pizzey (1974)). 48 One man figures prominently in Harriet's professional life, brilliant London-based advocate, Sir John Gallagher. He has an arrogant and self-satisfied exterior but with a degree of self-awareness of his own pompousness and smugness. He is, nonetheless, shown to be a brilliant lawyer.
Gradually through the second series the veneer begins to wear thin and we find him becoming rather more fallible. He recognises that Harriet is good at her job and does not share the misogynistic attitudes of many of his contemporaries. He goes further than mere respect and persuades Harriet to move to London to join the Chambers which he heads. By the end of the second series, he even propose marriage -albeit to assist his profile in his political ambitions. 49 In the 21st century by contrast, work is determined by the success of the whole set of the barristers -the Chambers -and the Senior Clerk's ability to draw in clients by satisfying solicitors. There are parallels between the themes and characters in North Square and those in Silk. In the opening episode of Silk we find a reprise of a scenario from North Square with the "touting party". The two series also share an ongoing theme involving the possibility of a breakaway by disgruntled members of the Chambers.
Through the two series, in contrast to the variety of work undertaken by Harriet Peterson, Martha Costello operates only at the criminal bar. We also see her engaging as a defence lawyer in a court martial of an officer who disobeys an order resulting in the death of one of the men under his command. 50 The range of issues, though is far more limited ranging from burglary and drug smuggling 51 , rape 52 , cottaging 53 , attempted murder , wounding 55 , property damage 56 , a death penalty appeal from the Commonwealth 57 and murder 58 . Along with the swathe of crime there is a little variation with slightly different legal issues arising from criminal actions -an employment problem for a police officer accused of racism to a fellow officer 59 and representing a security van driver failing to take proper care of the prisoners in his charge resulting in the death of one of the prisoners. 60

The portrayal of Harriet Peterson and Martha Costello
In the intervening period between 1971 and 2011 the style of TV drama has altered in terms of production values and style. The courtrooms and interior shots in the first series of Justice are cramped and look like the studio sets they are, although the courts become a little more ornate as the years unfold. The investment of money in the 21st century series is obvious. Although this can be seen as simply the changes which technology has brought, the budgets of all TV legal series have not always been so lavish. 61 One aspect of the older series which we do not find in the modern Silk is the parade of such a range of clients or work. Martha is a criminal defence specialist. She is ambitious but in a different way from Harriet. Her ambition is stark and reflects the changes from law as a gentleman's pursuit to a cut-throat business. This is the kind of change reflected in the literature about lawyers. The world of Henry Cecil with its absence of any sense of the need to cultivate solicitors has been replaced by "touting parties" and serious entertainment where they are plied with drink in the hope that they will brief the chambers. 62 54 Series 1  The personal is political in the world of the female barrister. We do get rather more of a sense of access to real inner lives of these women barristers than we get even in the internal soliloquising Horace Rumpole or the thoughtful James Kavanagh. This is partly down to the time spent with our female protagonists looking thoughtful as well as them discussing their goals and reflecting on the sacrifices they are making to succeed in the male dominated world they inhabit. Harriet Peterson talks about the problems she faces in the male world of law in the early 1970s. She wants to be treated on the basis of her forensic skill not her gender in a world of blatant male chauvinism. By the second decade of the 21st century direct themes of female exclusion and male privilege are less evident. These are not to the forefront in Martha Costello's world. We have, however, little idea of what drives Martha other than ambition. To adopt Prine's formulation about the nature of modern life, she seems to be "running just to be on the run". 63 Her inner emptiness is hinted at. She works to a bleak soundtrack of musicians from the Manchester area, The Smiths and Joy Division.
Both women differ from the original case centred model of Boyd Q.C. and Perry Mason where all the drama focuses on the case at hand. In both dramas a crucial element is the particular struggles of women in a male world. When confronted by a woman client who has worked and succeeded in what she knows is a "man's world" and hence wants a man as her counsel Harriet responds by telling her that she is getting precisely that -a woman who has succeeded in a bar of 200 where only 18 of the barristers are women. 64 She knows her worth too. She wants to maintain the lifestyle her income on the Northern Circuit has given her -£9,000 a year -a considerable sum at the time.
In addition, the dramas allow the women to have lives beyond the law but in rather different ways. The continuing early theme with Harriet Peterson as being a lone woman in a profession dominated by men is a focus. The world of the law is conspicuously male. The judges, the other barristers and the solicitors are all men. We encounter no other women in the law in the first series except as court stenographers. The intersection between gender and class is also illustrated in one episode where there appears an incipient gender solidarity between Harriet and the court cleaner. Harriet's distance, though, from the class of her client is shown in her snobbish acknowledgement that she does not care for the son of the cleaner and is only defending him out of duty and the sisterly solidarity dissolves in the face of class. 65 In the second series we see Harriet Peterson dealing with the demands of living in the north, being a minority demographic at the Bar and moving down to London further her career. The series' sub-theme beyond the week's case centres around the rivalry between Dr Ian Moody and Sir John Gallagher for the affections of Harriet. The former engineers visits to London on medical business to spend time with Harriet, and despite the attentions of his rival by the end of the second series when Harriet does marry him.
Martha Costello also has a private life. This, however, is reflective of the era she lives in. Priorities and issues have changed in the intervening 40 years. The options available to a woman have altered as has the age of the character. In place of a divorced woman in her mid 50s with a grown up son we have Martha, single in her mid 30s. Margaret Lockwood was 55 when she started her career as barrister Harriet Peterson while Maxine Peake was 36 when she started playing Martha Costello. The most stark contrast is with the development in the first series of Silk is Martha's unwanted pregnancy following a "one night stand" with her Chambers rival, Clive Reader. Like Rose Fitzgerald in North Square some years before 66 she determines that motherhood and the Bar are compatible but we do not see the implications of this as she has a miscarriage at the end of series 1. 67 Moffatt downplays what else Martha does and where she comes from. We hear in glancing references of her working class origins in Bolton but unlike, for instance, the family of barrister James Kavanagh or John Deed we never see them. The problem of portraying a rounded individual dramatically stems from the contrast between the tension and potential consequences of the work of a defence lawyer whose client's liberty is at stake and the minor inconveniences and scuffles of everyday family life. Giving these a significant secondary role did work in the other innovative series, Judge John Deed where the family life and professional life of the judge were permanently intertwined and interdependent. Otherwise, unless the light family relief has a special resonance, as with the exchanges between Hilda and Horace Rumpole, there is the risk of the family episodes merely interrupting the flow of the drama. The full backstory, then this is something which Moffatt sacrifices. This is in sharp contrast to North Square where the reality of combining a career and childcare is one of the compelling elements in the relationship between Billy Guthrie and Rose Fitzgerald. It means that the fact that we feel we know where Martha Costello is located socially and politically depends on hints rather than any direct narrative. Part of this comes from locating Martha and her accent in the Lancastrian working class. Here less is more. We know she is chippy and on the side of the underdog 66 North Square series passim 67 in episode 6 29th March 2011, following an altercation with her obsessed scummy client, Garry Rush, and a punch to the stomach.
but we infer this. There is actually precious little formal evidence. We do not see Martha doing the pro bono work which the middle class Harriet does. 68

Peripheral characters in Justice and Silk
One difference which we can see in the approach to TV lawyers dramas over the years has been the expansion of the roles and interest in peripheral characters. In Justice we have in the second series three principal players along with Margaret Lockwood's Harriet. We see the rivals for Harriet's hand in marriage -Dr Ian Moody and Sir John Gallagher in their professional roles, as well as, as suitors.
Both women's lives are significantly affected by another man in their lives -the Senior Clerk of Chambers. In Justice there is a broad brush explanation as to why it is so important for her success. The shift in Justice from the first series on the Northern circuit where clients seem to fall into Harriet's lap fortuitously to the cut and thrust of the London bar is marked. The Senior Clerk in Justice plays an Everyman role. Hence he changes from a straightforward chauvinist unwilling to brief this unknown woman to Harriet's biggest supporter. Like the audience he is able to see her get results. We see his influence in persuading solicitors that Harriet is a formidable advocate, although he is portrayed as a straightforward individual rather than the manipulative and mendacious characterisations of Senior Clerks which we find in North Square and Silk.
It is, however, something which becomes less of an issue as Harriet is soon established at the Bar in London. The ups and downs of Chambers' fortunes as opposed to individual reputations are, by contrast, constant looming major preoccupations in Silk. A much bigger set of Chambers is implied in Silk with Kate Brockman representing "the bottom end" of young Juniors. This is an important change of emphasis. Interestingly this issue of the context of Chambers rather than individual merit is an issue which Henry Cecil writing from the 1950s to the 1970s does not address in either his fiction or non-fiction. Whilst Cecil's writings are not a social scientific account of the world of barristers in this era he does capture the flavour of the times quite neatly (Robson 2014).
The economically driven structural context is the one we find in Silk. Just like Peter McLeish in North Square, Billy Lamb is Shoe Chambers' entrepreneurial conduit for business from solicitors. Exactly what he does is covered in greater depth in the second series with his relationship with gangland solicitor, Micky Joy which remains a third series theme. This is a far cry from the elegant world of Harriet Peterson and the characters of Henry Cecil's fiction.

Concluding Remarks
The male world of legal practice which was encountered before and after Justice has been surprisingly resistant on British television. It has taken a long time for women lawyers to achieve the high profile found in Silk. This might arise, paradoxically, from the coverage of women's issues which we find in Justice. We have a far more direct engagement with women's problems and the male dominated world with Harriet Peterson. Her world offers an insight into the challenges which made Henry Cecil advise women that if they really wanted to become lawyers they should stick to the backwaters of being an officebased solicitor (Cecil (1958) 162). Martha Costello is still working in an environment that continues to offer less to women but the gender inequality is overlaid by the work she does and its focus on crime and male criminals. The same kind of contrast can be made between the equivalent TV shows from the United States and Australia comparing early woman protagonists and their more recent return to prominence, with the earlier shows having a much more progressive edge. 69 For a sense of women's continued oppression under the law in Britain, both past and present, Justice from 1971 perhaps surprisingly is a more useful guide than Silk in the 21st century.