Showtrial review: Compelling cop and lawyer double act rescue this thriller from cliche, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

Rating:

The thing about the moral high ground is, you have to trample over a lot of other people to get there.

At a protest against climate change in Brighton , on the legal thriller Showtrial (BBC1), a posh bloke with a megaphone bellows, 'I will not apologise for the inconvenience to the privileged few.'

Those 'privileged few', by implication, are the thousands of ordinary Britons who miss crucial appointments, health treatments, funerals and well-deserved holidays, because self-appointed eco-activists decide to block a motorway or blockade an airport.

None, of course, are more privileged than the demonstrators who can afford to take days off to glue themselves to the tarmac, enjoying their glow of self-righteousness while they scupper their own cause.

The posh protester ended up not so much glued to the tarmac as smeared along it, after he was run over and left to die on a country road.

That scene felt like a tired cliche from an action movie: the victim tried to out-pedal the pursuing car, when there was nothing to stop him from leaping off his bike and diving for the safety of the ditch.

And much of the dialogue and plot-setting seemed equally forced at the beginning of this six-part series (all on iPlayer). One scene in particular was excruciating, as a squadron of senior police officers introduced themselves around a table at the start of a crisis conference. I've seen livelier Zoom meetings.

But the drama is rescued by its two central performances. Michael Socha plays the uniformed copper, Justin Mitchell, suspected of carrying out the hit-and-run attack.

The victim gasped his name with his last breath, and it doesn't help that the officer has been caught on video, threatening: 'I'd hate for a car to just smash into you one day. Leave you slowly dying by the side of the road.'

Mitchell's motive for killing the climate activist seems strong. He saw a pregnant woman die when emergency services were blocked from reaching her by demonstrators. But is he really the killer?

Adeel Akhtar is the defence solicitor, Sam Malik, who revels in taking unpopular cases. Akhtar's a versatile actor, whose career has seen him tackle wildly uneven roles — from awkward comedy in Back To Life, to disturbing misfit characters in Sherwood and Killing Eve.

Malik has all the ticks and undercurrents that Akhtar can portray so well, but he's also a complex personality with multiple aspects to his life: not just a maverick lawyer but a single father, an insomniac and a widower whose wife killed herself.

He and Socha have an instant rapport that turns all their scenes into a double act. The initial police interview, where Mitchell explains why his partner has fled the country — she's driven to Serbia 'to see a man about a dog' — was both hilarious and gripping, and about as far from a Line Of Duty interrogation as can be imagined.