John Mortimer and Rumpole
As the old Jewish joke goes if John Mortimer was alive today he would be turning in his grave.
Why? Rumpole of the Bailey is repeated every Wednesday evening and carries a PC health warning before it is broadcast by Talking Pictures that it might offend some viewers but should be judged by its times.
John Mortimer was a radical lawyer who, both in Rumpole and elsewhere, enjoyed tilting his lance at the Establishment.
Rumpole rankles against the pomposity of barristers in his chambers like Claude Erskine Brown, he takes on judges at trial who have fixed and dogmatic views, he upholds vigorously the judicial system of innocence till proven guilty.
There is little here to offend the modern viewer.
Two weeks ago the programme took place in Africa where there was some racial stereotyping in a court case where two tribal rivalries were at issue but this week’s episode returns to a domestic trial and chambers life both well and humorously observed.
The defendants on trial were a husband and wife (Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray) who were actually married for sixty years.
They were charged with running a house of ill repute. Also chambers had to choose a new head and Rumpole’s wife Hilda is promoting vigorously her husband.
As a third strand Rumpole’s bag carrier is a young feminist whose pupil mistress is Phyliida Trant ( Rumpole calls her Portia ) and who leaks the identity of a civil servant using the brothel to a school friend reporter.
The latter issue, far from being of its times, has contemporary resonance because of social media.
It all always makes for an entertaining hour’s viewing and I would offer the theory that much of its success lies with the contrarian personality not of Horace Rumpole but of his creator John Mortimer.
Mortimer might attack the Establishment for inherited privilege but he was happy to inherit his father’s home.
Northern judges come in for Rumpole’s ridicule and there is something of the snob about Mortimer.
In short he espouses many of the values he ridicules but this may explain the success of the programme.
The legal world of Rumpole was predominantly white and male but Phyllida Trant (Patricia Hodge) fights her corner and some of the most amusing scenes feature Rumpole and She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed’, his domineering wife Hilda (Peggy Thorpe-Bates).
