The UK blaw­gos­phere has not, yet, set itself alight (Reduc­tio ad Absur­dum & CharonQC notwith­stand­ing) with reflec­tions on the BBC’s new series “The Bar­ris­ters” reveal­ing the hith­erto unknown work­ings of Britain’s sec­ond old­est pro­fes­sion: the Bar.

The four part series has spent sev­eral years fol­low­ing both bar­ris­ters, and aspi­rant bar­ris­ters, around to see how the pro­fes­sion ticks and to unlock the glam­our: “the weep­ing behind the wigs, the ire behind the injunc­tions, the for­ni­ca­tion behind the feenote”. The Bar Coun­cil has co-operated with the BBC in mak­ing this doc­u­men­tary, though who was hold­ing whom’s cock is not yet entirely clear. Cer­tainly the BBC wanted a good doc­u­men­tary and the Bar Coun­cil wanted a bit of pub­lic­ity that dif­fered from the usual tabloid “Pub­licly Funded Bar­ris­ters Drink Cham­pagne From The Corpses Of Orphaned Chil­dren Hor­ror” that is its norm. Since the Bar Coun­cil is an organ­i­sa­tion that could fuck up any PR story: “Bar Coun­cil res­cues Jews from Auschwitz: receives con­dem­na­tion from Inter­na­tional Jew­ish Con­gress for heavy hand­ed­ness against the Nazis” it leaped at this opportunity.

So the premise was clear: strip away the media cliches, the pom­pos­ity and the veneer of intel­lec­tual and social supe­ri­or­ity and show the peo­ple behind the leg­end. A nice idea. Mind you Geeklawyer is well known for being a snob and a bit pompous, and was thus not entirely happy with the idea of being rep­re­sented as a well edu­cated plumber; albeit one with a vast IQ and an uncanny abil­ity to know which fork to use when at a Royal Reception.

So then, how was it? The august legal com­men­ta­tor CharonQC has already exco­ri­ated it as the mind­less and unin­ter­est­ing per­am­bu­la­tion of an insti­tu­tion best rel­e­gated to medieval Eng­land. Geeklawyer dis­agrees: a fly on the wall doc­u­men­tary with sym­pa­thetic char­ac­ters and an oblique insti­tu­tion can make for good TV. So it was with Episode one. Well, OK, when one talks of ‘sym­pa­thetic’ Geeklawyer con­fuses that with ‘pathetic’. We had a broad selec­tion of Eth­nics, but just to prove that the pro­fes­sion wasn’t racist, because That Would Not Do. Then we had a huge num­ber of North­ern­ers from Leeds Sal­ford and Hert­ford­shire, again to prove that this was not a South­ern based profession.

What we did not have have was any Eto­ni­ans, or God for­bid, even Wyke­hamists since that would sug­gest the Bar remains an upper or upper-middle class game: and that would never do. And that would explain ‘Anne’, an Eth­nic from the Caribbean, whose dic­tion, judg­ing by her mother’s pre­sum­ably unwel­come appear­ance, had drifted from the patoise of Kingston (Jamaica rather than Sur­rey one would guess) to that of the recieved pro­nun­ci­a­tion of Chelsea. Heav­ens, it is almost as though she were putting on a posh accent to improve her chances of a pupil­lage. Has that ever hap­pened before? No, Geeklawyer didn’t think so either.

The only white per­son was a bit of totty whose name Geeklawyer for­gets: really it doesn’t mat­ter because she was only there because she was pretty and had nice tits that the cam­era­man zoomed in on all the time: a bit like the pupil­lage com­mit­tees she stripped off for, one imag­ines (what? they don’t make them do that any­more? pfff, for shame). Was it churl­ish to gig­gle at the rather dim Ibrahim (or Chan­der or Ick­bal or what­ever his name was) blun­der­ing through a moot with a pair of size 12 wellies in his mouth? Yes it was, but one did it any­way. It was rather sweet to hear the moot judge utter, and the recip­i­ents believe, the tra­di­tional com­mis­er­a­tion to a moot loser:

“This was a par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult moot on a fine point of law that many expe­ri­enced prac­ti­tion­ers would stum­ble over. You were bet­ter than most of them and it was a finely bal­anced deci­sion because team A had a black guy and team B had a Jew­ish guy. Phew! On bal­ance we decided for team C, the pair of pretty white chicks with great tits because, well, of that really, oh and because, Iqbal, you couldn’t have per­suaded us a light switch was on even if you licked your fin­gers and stuck them in the cunt­ing bulb socket.”

So, if there was any­thing slightly repel­lent in this series it was the stu­dents. There, Geeklawyer said it. He says sorry to his many stu­dent read­ers but you have to under­stand how bad you look to a) out­siders and b) insid­ers. Really. One feels sorry to say it but the sight of grasp­ing unquench­able ambi­tion and striv­ing is utterly repel­lent. Why? hard to say. One sup­poses that they have to do this to get on in life.

Of course in order to add a bit of Big Brother drama and keep the view­ers hooked it was nec­es­sary to amplify how hard it was to be a bar­ris­ter: 500 Oxbridge dou­ble firsts for every chamber’s toi­let clean­ing job etc. Not wrong, obvi­ously, but a bit cynical.

Lovely was the Inn Benchers rip­ping the liv­ing crap out of stu­dents at an ‘away day’ near Wind­sor Cas­tle, where, by tra­di­tion, some of the Benchers get to try and shag pretty young wannabe’s. Oh hang on, Geeklawyer has received a threat­en­ing note from the Bar Coun­cil. “They attend for the noble and self­less pur­pose of advanc­ing stu­dents skills.” Bencher Mas­ter John Leslie, whose motives are beyond ques­tion, is seen telling one stu­dent that he really doesn’t give a fly­ing fuck what the stu­dent ‘thinks’ when he is mak­ing sub­mis­sions to the court: and thereby impresses some basic rules on him about advo­cacy in the Eng­lish courts. Geeklawyer remem­bers with vast vast fond­ness his manda­tory ‘Instruc­tions to Coun­sel’ course taken while a pupil, and this coloured his pos­i­tive impres­sion of the piece.

For those of us who are hacks at the Eng­lish Bar the other, non-studenty, parts of the film were of much hilar­ity and inter­est. With­out doubt the star of episode one was Richard ‘Dicky’ Bond. A crim­i­nal hack in some North­ern set who does crim­i­nal law. Those of us doing civil law feel pity (OK, yes, and a lit­tle con­tempt) for our bretheren at the Crim­i­nal Bar who spend a whole day in court for £50 and who then go beg­ging out­side tube sta­tions for enough money for the fare home and cup of soup. Dicky was with­out doubt the star of episode one (@infobunny, an infa­mously licen­tious law librar­ian, on Twit­ter has expressed the desire to have his chil­dren for god’s sake). All in all a ter­rific and engag­ing first episode.