Rumpole Of The Bailey - The Complete (Box Set)

Advantages: Great characters, stories, acting
Disadvantages: Some editing in some box-sets

...two different actresses portraying Hilda Rumpole (Peggy Thorpe-Bates and Marion Mathie), affectionately referred to as 'She Who Must Be Obeyed'. Rumpole's mannerisms and penchant for the less genteel things in life are done by McKern in a perfect contrast to the others in Chambers, be they Guthrie Featherstone (played by Peter Bowles as an upper-middle, Conservative-Labour MP QC) or 'Soapy Sam' Ballard (Peter Blythe), Claude Erskine-Brown (Julian ...
...one might hazard a comparison, Rumpole does not always win the case, although he almost always solves the mystery. Rarely do cases turn on points of law (indeed, Phyllida Erskine-Brown, the 'Portia' of Chambers once remarked that Rumpole knew nothing of law, but did know how to win over a jury), but the cases usually involve issues of eccentricity, both among those in the legal profession as well as among those who have need of the legal profession. ... Read review