British ITV drama ‘that made TV history’ storms Netflix top 10 chart

Netflix viewers have rushed to watch a legal drama from the man who created The Crown.

First hitting screens in 2002, The Jury was the first TV show to ever be allowed to film inside the historic Old Bailey courthouse.

Before he was busy delving into the private lives of the Royal Family, Peter Morgan penned this drama, which fans have called a ‘compelling must-see’.

The first season followed the killing of a teenage boy, who was stabbed 28 times on his way to school one morning. After one of his classmates is charged with murder, a jury must decide his guilt.

‘The trial, which is engulfed in protests and media speculation, brings together 12 jurors who find themselves having to make a decision that the entire country is waiting for,’ it was teased of the series.

The jurors tasked with making a ruling included Charles, a young man who has left the seminary to search for his lost love; Elsie, an old lonely woman who is dying; Johnny, a recovering alcoholic; Jeremy, a once-wealthy family man who lost all his money when conned by a friend in a bad investment and Marcia, a single mother who is forced to let her mother back into her life during the trial.

The actors who played jury members included Gerard Butler, Helen McCrory, Stuart Bunce, Nicholas Farell and Tim Healy.

Over a decade later – in 2011 – it was followed by a second season.

This week both were added onto Netflix, with the show now one of the most watched shows in the UK, currently sitting on number 7 on the charts.

In 2010 the second season of The Jury was announced, with ITV describing the show as a ‘character-based series which focuses on the everyday people who find themselves at the centre of one of the most controversial criminal re-trials of their time’.

Standing alone from the events of the first season, the second follows the retrial of Alan Lane, who was convicted five years earlier of the murder of three women whom he’d met through an Internet dating site.

The jurors include Paul Brierly, a single man looking after his mother; Katherine Bulmore, a teacher who has had an affair with a 17-year-old pupil; Tahir Takana, a Sudanese immigrant waiting to get a visa to join his brother in the US and Rashid, a quiet young man with Asperger’s Syndrome.

The cast included Julie Walters, Sarah Alexander, Roger Allen, Danny Babington, Lisa Dillon and Jo Hartley.

Sharing their thoughts on the show online, viewers called it ‘thought-provoking’, ‘compelling’ and the ‘perfect binge watch’.

Speaking in 2011 Peter, who had gone on to work on movies including The Queen, Frost/ Nixon and The Other Boleyn Girl, spoke about how another season came to fruition after a decade.

‘I had fun doing the original one and enjoyed it and missed it. I suddenly thought, “I’d like to do that again”. There’d been silence from ITV so I assumed they didn’t want me to do another one, and I think maybe they thought because I was writing films I wouldn’t want to do one,’ he said.

‘So, there was this misunderstanding.

‘But I said, “Fancy another one? Because I’d really love to write one”. And they said, “Sure”.’

The Jury is streaming on Netflix.

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