First watched : 24 February 1977
I'm a bit more confident that I first watched this day time staple in John's house.
Crown Court was usually broadcast three days a week and was brilliantly simple in concept. A fictitious legal case - once it had got to court - would be dramatised into three half-hour parts . Granada TV would then select a real jury from the electoral register to listen to the arguments and come up with a verdict - Equity rules meant that the foreman had to be an actor though, The series took advantage of the inherent theatrical qualities of the courtroom and of course was very cheap to make as the set never changed.
By lucky coincidence the very episode we watched is on Youtube. It was the third concluding part of a story called "A Matter of Faith" where a supposed faith healer took the husband of one of his clients to court after being described as a fraud in a radio broadcast. Watching it again rang no bells at all but there again the diary says nothing about how attentively we were watching; it's quite likely we gave it just the occasional glance whilst playing a game of chess.
What I did note was some high quality acting from familiar faces. John Barron ( C.J. from Reginald Perrin ) was the droll judge and Richard Wilson was outstanding as the defendant's barrister. There were also a few cutaways to a very young ( and very attractive ) Gwyneth Strong ( Cassandra from Only Fools And Horses ) who I presume played a bigger part in the earlier instalments. Incidentally, the jury found for the defendant.
The one episode I do recall clearly was viewed some years later. With the help of imdb I have determined it was broadcast on 17 June 1982. I don't remember being ill around then but I did have O Level exams in Sociology and General Studies around that time so I'm guessing we might have been given the afternoon off after one of those. It was the final part of a story called "The Fiddling Connection" and starred Kevin Lloyd as a supermarket employee accused of dishonesty. He turned the tables on his employers and, conducting his own defence, exposed their fraudulent practice of "buncing" i.e adding a fictitious item , such as a tin of spaghetti hoops, to the bill when a customer came to the checkout with a full trolley. Watch out for that when you next go to Asda ! He got off. Now I think about it I recall another story where a washed-up actor had resorted to shoplifting but I can't recall the real actor's name to look it up.
Crown Court ran from 1972 ( the year Crown Courts replaced their medieval predecessors ) until 1984. I'm surprised, given the talent involved, that it's not more celebrated. It seems to have survived in the archives more or less intact and has been re-run on minor satellite channels over the last decade.
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