The Innocence Project
Starts Thursday 9 November at 8.00pm on ±«Óãtv ONE
Introduction
The Innocence Project is a major new eight-part ±«Óãtv ONE drama series from Tightrope for ±«Óãtv Northern Ireland. This original and vibrant series follows a group of ambitious law students.
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The Innocence Project is about the law – but not about lawyers or the police. It's about failures in the process and cracks in the system. It's about young people with fire in their bellies and a healthy disregard for authority.
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Jane Tranter, the ±«Óãtv's Controller of Drama Commissioning, says: "It's great to be working with the creative powerhouse of Hilary Bevan Jones and Paul Abbott, and to have the attention of Tightrope focused on smart, pre-watershed drama on ±«Óãtv ONE.
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"Oliver Brown is an extraordinary and bright new writing talent, and his first major drama series is packed full of engaging characters and stonking stories."
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Champion of the underdog and a brilliant teacher, Professor Jon Ford (Lloyd Owen: Miss Potter – film for release 2007, Monarch of the Glen) sets up The Innocence Project, peopled entirely by a hand-picked group of law students.
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His passion for his subject ignites something new and exciting in his students. They take on cases pro bono that nobody else wants to know about: cases that people have forgotten, cases that others have given up on.
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They take on "clients" with no hope, those who have possibly been wrongly convicted – because sometimes the English justice system fails.
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Smart and with an infectious enthusiasm, Ford's team is made up of fresh-faced 19-year-old university students who choose to make a difference, while still going through the serious business of growing up.
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Their job is part-investigator, part-lawyer – and all before they're out of full-time education.
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The cast of exciting, young talent includes: Christine Bottomley (The Street) as Sarah – a mine of useless information, but who knows what's what socially, sexually and intellectually; Irish newcomer Ruth Bradley as Beth – brilliant, driven and passionate; Stephen Graham (Goal, Gangs of New York) as Andrew – a competitive and persistent mature student on sabbatical from the police; Oliver James (What a Girl Wants) as Nick – a charmer who always gets what he wants; and Luke Treadaway (Brothers of the Head – film for release 2006) as the idealistic Adam.
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The Innocence Project is created and lead written by Oliver Brown (Waking the Dead, Bon Voyage); directed by Bill Anderson (Lewis, The Lakes), Morag McKinnon (Buried) and Peter Hoar (Wire in the Blood); and produced by Kirstie Macdonald (Outlaws).
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The series was commissioned for ±«Óãtv Northern Ireland (Murphy's Law, The Amazing Mrs Pritchard) by Patrick Spence and Kate Evans, and executive produced by Hilary Bevan Jones and Paul Abbott (Tightrope – The Girl in the Café, Dad, To the Ends of the Earth and All in the Game).
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A Tightrope production for ±«Óãtv Northern Ireland, The Innocence Project was filmed entirely on location in Salford.
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Introduction by Oliver Brown
"I stumbled across the real Innocence Project while researching another series idea. Like most of my ideas, that one failed to materialise into anything that would get even close to actually being made – but the story of law students battling the system on behalf of the wrongly convicted immediately sparked my interest.
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"I'm not convinced about the 'stranger than...', but reality is often more interesting than fiction.
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"As a failed, or at least frustrated, lawyer myself, the thought of writing a legal show had an obvious attraction. If you can't write about what you know, I figure you might as well write about what you think you know.
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"But I struggled to remember what I learnt about criminal law while doing my degree; I realised that much of what I'd been taught was no longer true.
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"And not just the small stuff – not a minor adjustment here or a change in emphasis there. Some fundamental principles have either disappeared completely or been seriously diluted. Ideas which used to be central to English criminal law – such as double jeopardy, the right to silence and even the premise of innocent until proven guilty – have all suffered in the last 15 years.
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"Many people would try to justify such changes – and they have. But it's always struck me as at least mildly ironic that such basic safeguards have been altered at the same time as science has provided such a leap forward in investigative resources and techniques. The individual, guilty or innocent, is assailed from all sides.
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"Everybody knows about the most famous miscarriages of justice – those involving Irish terrorism and, more recently, cot deaths. They've made headlines, as they should.
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"But for every newsworthy case, there are plenty that barely get a mention – which, to me, are both the most interesting and the most worrying.
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"They're not about a political issue and they're not about police corruption. They're simply about mistakes which inevitably occur within the system and then what happens once they've been made.
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"The show itself has been a pleasure to work on. Partly because, instead of being stuck in solitary writing, I've been fortunate enough to be based at the production office.
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"But mostly because of all the ideas I would never have had on my own."
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Oliver Brown studied Law at university and The Innocence Project marks his first major series. Other television writing credits include: an original two-part drama, Bon Voyage, and episodes of Waking the Dead and Rescue Me.
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Drama Publicity
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