North Square
| North Square | |
|---|---|
DVD cover
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| Created by | Peter Moffat |
| Starring |
Phil Davis Helen McCrory Kevin McKidd Rupert Penry-Jones Kim Vithana Dominic Rowan Victoria Smurfit Ruth Millar Tony Monroe Sasha Behar James Murray James Midgeley |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| No. of episodes | 10 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Running time | 50 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | Channel 4 |
| Original release | 18 October – 20 December 2000 |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows |
Criminal Justice Silk |
North Square is a British television drama series written and created by Peter Moffat, and broadcast by Channel 4 from October 18 to December 20, 2000. Starring an ensemble cast, including Phil Davis, Rupert Penry-Jones, Helen McCrory and Kevin McKidd, the programme is set around the practice of a barristers' chambers in Leeds. The series was filmed in and around the real life Park Square, Leeds. This is the area in the city where the majority of barristers' chambers are concentrated.
Despite gaining considerable critical acclaim, the show failed to garner a substantial audience resulting in only the one series of ten episodes being produced. In Australia, the series was broadcast in 2001 on ABC and repeated in 2004 after popular and critical acclaim. The full series was released on DVD for the first time by Acorn Media UK on March 5, 2012.
North Square is a British drama about a group of young, irreverent barristers all hoping to make their mark in the legal profession at a defence chambers in Leeds, West Yorkshire. They are all under the leadership of their Machiavellian chief clerk Peter McLeish (Phil Davis), who is clever and obsessed by work and doesn't appear to have a social life. He's struggling to make this new enterprise work and will do anything to make it succeed and beat his archrival, Michael Marlowe (Tony Monroe), from whom he left, taking the best barristers with him. He establishes relationships with the top criminals in Leeds so he can get their best cases. He is not above persuading a client to offer a plea, not because it's in their best interests but because he doesn't want to miss out on a bigger case coming up.
Early in the series, Rose (Helen McCrory) and Billy (Kevin McKidd) give birth to a baby boy and Rose comes back to work four days later. Billy is on an assault charge for defending Wendy De Souza (Kim Vithana), their head of chambers, whom another barrister, Leo Wilson (who works for Marlowe's chambers), claimed only got to her position because of her skin colour and is suspended but then cleared. However, Marlowe continues to ask Billy to come back to his chambers which he refuses to do and he instructs the case to go to trial. Morag Black (Ruth Millar) is a new pupil at chambers, taken under the wing of Rose, and is used as a scapegoat to represent cases for Peter while he gives more high-profile cases to other barristers. Johnny Boy (James Murray) begins a relationship with Morag, however, Peter is against the relationship and instructs them both to end it. Later on, Hussein Ali (Robert Mountford), another pupil, also joins chambers under the guidance of Tom Mitford (Dominic Rowan), yet there is only one new place in chambers available. Peter supports Hussein as he believes he will bring in business because he's a British Asian. At the end of the series the decision of who should stay in chambers goes to Hussein, however Peter tells Morag that she can "squat" in their chambers.
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