The Trial: 'sharp' legal drama with a 'clever' script

Whenever you hear a news report about "young people doing something bad", said Tilly Pearce in The i Paper, it's "almost instinctual" to ask yourself how their parents could have let it happen. This one-off drama from Channel 5 "takes this idea and runs with it", imagining a near-future in which parents can be tried alongside their children as "accessories to criminal acts".

Set in 2035, it introduces us to David (Ben Miles) and Dione Sinclair (Claire Skinner), "seemingly perfect" parents who are hauled in for questioning when their teenage daughter Teah (India Fowler) is arrested for a serious offence. The exact nature of her crime is not immediately revealed to them, allowing "no-nonsense" judicial inquisitor Sarah Willis (Saoirse-Monica Jackson from "Derry Girls") to conduct a cat-and-mouse interrogation that is intended to "catch the Sinclairs out".

"The interrogation involves asking the couple to go through their history, right back to the first date," said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph, to work out where they went wrong. The show "packs no emotional punch", and is a bit odd tonally: while it's billed as drama, you don't feel as though you're expected to take it very seriously. It's a bit like Netflix's "Adolescence", with laughs.

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But there are some smart insights amid the satire. And the storytelling is "sharp", said Carol Midgley in The Times, eked out in a "clever, lean script". With a small cast and few props, it could easily be a stage play, but one that is all wrapped up in less than an hour – which is surely a blessing.