It’s hard to tell what The Trial is supposed to be. Channel 4’s reality drama puts Simon Davis on trial for the murder of his ex-wife, Carla Davis. The Davises, their lovers and character witnesses are played by actors; the judge, lawyer and jury are ordinary chaps like you and me.
So the murder is invented but the trial, we were encouraged to think, is somehow real. An inverse Big Brother: the contestants are voted into the prison rather than out of it.
The idea is to show us how a trial works from every angle: prosecution, defence, jury deliberation and the judge’s sentencing. But most trials, I’m told, are long and boring. This one is pure Agatha Christie: one revelation followed by another in the way that it doesn’t in real life.
