Dated or Delightful? 'Rumpole of the Bailey'

In this installment of Dated or Delightful, we travel back to the late 70’s to discover if an ITV courtroom drama about a binge drinking, poetry loving, criminal defending barrister still stands up as an entertaining example of telly in 2016. May I present my evidence for the case of Rumpole of the Bailey?

First off, I had quite the wrong impression of what this show really was. I had always assumed it was a period piece set a couple of centuries or so ago –the wigs, the blustery poetry, even the title shouted old timey costume production. Not that there’s anything wrong with that - I found Garrow’s Law to be a solid historical legal program, after all.

Nevertheless, when I actually set upon the task of watching this almost four decades old series, I was in for a surprise. Rumpole was a much more modern day story than I had imagined while still brimming with British justice system traditions which made this courtroom drama enthusiast quite an entertained viewer.