CLIVE COLEMAN knows plenty of lawyers — he has taught a whole generation of them. Now, he says, it’s time to call in a few favours. Coleman has just taken over as presenter of Law in Action, the BBC Radio 4 flagship legal news and current affairs programme, where his twin careers in both law and broadcasting will fuse perfectly.
“When Marcel Berlins (who presented the programme for 15 years) announced he was going, a number of people who were taught by me suggested I apply,” Coleman says. “Then I got a phone call inviting me to put my name forward.”
The job looks tailor-made. He was a jobbing barrister for four years — general common law, criminal, personal injury, “anything that came through the door” — and then he decided to opt for writing. “I knew I’d never be able to combine it with practice so in 1990 I went to the Inns of Court School of Law and was a senior, then principal, lecturer on the Bar Vocational Course. I taught every barrister who came through between 1990 and 1999,” he says.
But it is as a writer and broadcaster — first in comedy and then drama — that he made his name, chiefly with the series Chambers, a sitcom about barristers first broadcast on Radio 4 and then in two series on BBC One in 2000 and 2001.
Whether fictional or current affairs, though, Coleman argues that there is a huge and growing fascination with the law. “It has a far more mainstream appeal than it used to,” he says. “A huge percentage of major news stories now have a legal angle — from Lord Goldsmith’s advice on the war in Iraq to Naomi Campbell’s privacy action . . . the law is more than ever part and parcel of the daily diet of debate.”
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Equally, the plethora of TV dramas — such as The Brief, Judge John Deed or Kavanagh QC — testify to the appetite for law. Judge Deed’s creator is now making a legal drama for the BBC on duty solicitors. “Like the makers of drama, broadcasters need to respond to the public’s interest in the legal world by analysing and explaining the changes.”
Law in Action goes out in three series over the year, 28 programmes in all. In Berlins’s time it built up a large following — 850,000 listeners — despite its slot of mid-afternoon on Fridays; and there is now no repeat. So does Coleman plan changes? “The production team is very keen that it is a programme as much for the people who use the legal system as those who produce it. It already is — but we want more emphasis on how people navigate the criminal and civil justice programme. We want it to speak to as broad an audience as possible so that people who don’t have legal backgrounds will be engaged and not find it alienating in terms of the language. But it won’t radically change — it will remain what it has been, an authoritative programme.”
The work will be a more serious side of the law than Coleman has been used to. Within two years of leaving the Bar he won the BBC Radio Light Entertainment Contract Writers Award in 1992 and he regularly worked for WeekEnding, The News Huddlines and also wrote the sitcom Hair in the Gate, starring Alistair McGowan.
He wrote for Spitting Image, Smith and Jones and Clive Anderson Talks Back, among others. The big break, though, came with the series Chambers. He was involved in the production as an assistant producer as well as the writer. The authentic nature of the set, he says, came from his own knowledge. “It was a composite, in fact, though people would come up to me and say they knew which set it was based on. It was really clever — down to the relief in the lintels of the doors.”
But comedy is a hard way to earn a living. “Making people laugh three times a page, which is what you have to do, over a lengthy period of time, is very difficult to do,” he admits. The second series of Chambers did not get enough viewing figures to justify a third series. “It was very exposed — it probably should have been on BBC Two. The problem with writing comedy is that there’s very little work, unless you’re doing a series. At any one time, there are probably no more than five people earning their living out of sitcoms. Eventually comedy dries up.”
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So he started writing drama — including The Bill, on ITV, for which he acted as legal consultant on court-based story lines, as well as Heartbeat and Crossroads. At the same time, he developed a sideline in afterdinner speeches, mainly to non-lawyers. “It’s a great job for a writer — a great way of meeting people.”
Now he plans to use his wide network. “Law in Action won’t ever be top of the listening charts. But it has an important place,” he says. “People tune in because of a greater awareness of legal rights and issues. Access to justice has never been more important. International law also has a greater resonance for people and law-breaking and justice, especially detection, arrest and trial of terrorists, is arguably the overriding concern of the man now riding more nervously than ever on the Clapham omnibus.
“It’s pompous and plain stupid to pretend that the Human Rights Act or changes to the legal system are replacing Becks’s texts or Dirty Den’s online chats as the ‘must-have’ conversations down the pub or at the water cooler. But there has never been a greater need for clear, user-friendly legal analysis in the media. We have a role in enabling people to understand and get round the justice system.”