Trial & Retribution: The Fifth Collection...

Introduction

Trial and Retribution has been running since 1997 and comes from the pen of Lynda La Plante, who is undoubtedly the Queen of UK TV crime after series such as Widows, Prime Suspect, The Commander and a myriad of one-off drama's such as the recent Above Suspicion. Despite liking Prime Suspect (Helen Mirren and Tom Bell at their finest), I've never really been a La Plante fan. I can't really tell you why, it's just one of those things, and so I avoided Trial & Retribution until last year when I finally got to watch this very series as my introduction.

T&R follows the investigations of a murder squad led by DCI Roison Connor (Victoria Smurfitt) and overseen by DCS Mike Walker (David Hayman) who seems to have joined the Metropolitan Police after being sacked by Everton FC (and there was me thinking he'd gone back to Norwich…). Connor and Walker are backed up by DS 'Satch' Satchell (Dorian Lough) and a number of competent if not high profile enough team members to be mentioned on the PR piece accompanying this release.

This release contains four stories split over 3 discs, but I got one disc with the following stories on it:



Rules Of The Game A metallic suitcase is spotted abandoned in the car park at Heathrow Airport, contained in which is the body of a young Ukrainian woman. Initially believed to be a student, it is quickly discovered that she was starting out on a potentially lucrative sideline as an escort. Prime suspect for the murder is high profile Ukrainian millionaire Vitali Malikov (Marcel Iures), seemingly untouchable due to his links with British Intelligence.

Kill The King Paediatric surgeon Jonathon Carlisle is found murdered and Roison Connor finds a links to an inquiry into the death of a young girl during surgery. Carlisle is accused of making a mistake during surgery and Walker, a friend of Carlisle's through charity work, decides to focus the attention in this direction, with tragic results.

Visual

Not sure if it was just my PR disc, but I had awful trouble with glitches/sticking throughout the final half hour of the initial story Rules Of The Game. Hopefully this transfer/authoring issue is not present in the retail version.

Extras

Lynda La Plante Biography - short text biography that explains how she moved from actress to successful writer and reminds me that she has a CBE (which I probably saw on some Honours list but had completely forgotten).

Cast Biographies - film/TV series list for some of the major cast members (i.e the characters in the Police Force). Would have been good to see something similar for some of the guest stars.

Picture Gallery - short series of stills, either PR shots or production stills

Overall

I've become quite a fan of this series after missing the first nine years. My initial scepticism was the focus on the retribution phase where the case was tried in Court as it sounded too much like a UK imitation of Law & Order, which has no peers, and UK TV doesn't in my opinion do Court dramas too well. What I have found though is that there is little Courtroom drama in the more modern episodes and thus the series has morphed into a fine detective drama with the usual flawed characters and interesting murder scenarios.

This series was particularly good, although it's a shame I didn't get the discs for the remaining two stories Conviction and The Box - the latter quite a bizarre and engaging story for both plot and subplot.

I like the trio that head up the cast here, with personality clashes featuring prominently between Hayman and Smurfitt, and Smurfitt and Lough. As experienced coppers, you can see them with their flaws revealed as they try to influence the direction of cases based on their experiences, gut feeling and sometimes prejudices/bias. Always makes for a good story where there's conflict, albeit nothing too serious (bar the body count, obviously).

Not a bad release of a series that only aired last year, decent picture and a good transfer (bar the issue mentioned above).