The Times, October 28, 1994, by Giles Coren
"The risk of putting Lucan on trial--
A mock trial may satisfy television viewers but it could 
bring about a grave injustice"
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Unsolved murder mysteries never die, they just turn into 
television programmes. Rumours that Jack Nicholson is to 
star in a film about Jack the Ripper prove that there is no 
time limit to the resuscitation of dead cases, and 1984's 
*Trial of Richard II* showed that a 500-year delay is no 
hindrance to the gathering of evidence. Enoch Powell, 
remember was not daunted by a gap that spanned millennia 
when he acquitted the Romans in the case of the murdered 
Messiah.

By comparison with these historical rehashings, Granada's 
*The Trial of Lord Lucan*, on November 10, looks like a 
positively speedy response to the news that a peer of the 
realm has gone missing and is suspected of murdering the 
nanny.

Television trial addicts in Britain have always had to 
settle for second-best. In America, where viewers are 
treated to the real thing, trials like that of O.J.Simpson 
dominate the ratings. Here we must make do with misty 
memories of *Crown Court* and the occasional historical 
mock-up.

In 1988 LWT's *The Trial of Sir Roger Hollis* followed 
similar treatments of Richard III and Lee Harvey Oswald. And 
in 1991 *The Trials of Oz* recreated the famous case from 
the 1960s, attracting attention for the performance of 
Leslie Phillips as the judge rather than for its 
verisimilitude. Phillips had endeared himself to trial-
watchers a year earlier, as Lord Lane in *Who Bombed 
Birmingham?*

Then there was *The Trial of Lady Chatterley* in 1980, with 
Edward Woodward as counsel for the prosecution. A *Sun* 
phone-poll voted three to one against its being aired on 
grounds on obscenity. But the television public, still 
deprived of cameras in court, are suckers for the fictional 
mock-up.

*The Trial of Lord Lucan* is taking itself seriously. 
Divering from recorded fact at the moment when Lucan's 
abandoned car was discovered in Newhaven, the programme 
tells how the imperilled peer was actually found in the 
vehicle and arrested. Efforts have been made to present the 
sort of defence that Lucan might have used, and the jury has 
been selected "in the proper fashion" from the public. 
However, given the problems involving in selecting an 
unprejudiced jury for the Simpson case, it is difficult to 
imagine 12 British people with no opinions on Lucan.

Furthermore, Granada is so desperate to keep the final 
verdict a secret that, in a style reminiscent of the Who 
Shot J.R.? mystery, they have filmed three possible 
outcomes, and only a select group of executives know which 
is to be aired.

It all seems harmless enough. The Lucan case has, after all, 
become a national joke. But Patrick Marnham, author of 
*Trial of Havoc", which blames the murder on a hired hitman, 
is worried. "It is very dodgy indeed," he claims. "The 
police consider the case open, and still want to charge 
Lucan with the murder. This programme could prejudice the 
real trial when, and if, it eventually takes place. The 
programme-makers are assuming that he is dead, but public 
opinion swings very much the other way. Much of this stuff 
is *sub judice*.

"The original coroner's verdict, in June 1975, found Lucan 
guilty *in absentia,* Marnham says, "and as a result 
legislation was passed in 1977 to prevent coroners charging 
a person with murder. Now it is happening all over again."

But the public loves its courtroom dramas and until we are 
privileged with true-life action of the Simpson kind, we 
will continue to put up with these flights of historical 
fancy, rubber bones to starving dogs though they undoubtedly are.



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